Abstract
The general goal of the current study was to explore the current attitudes on marriage and cohabitation amongst young Americans. More specifically, this study aimed to examine reasons for postponing marriage. It also explored the relationship between personal values and attitudes regarding marriage and cohabitation (including the impact of age and gender), gender differences in personal values, and the influence of parental divorce on attitudes toward marriage. A total of 389 individuals took part in this study by completing a battery of self-reports via Qualtrics. Participants were psychology students recruited from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (n = 81) and workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (n = 291). Participants were 58.9% female (Mean Age = 27.23; SD = 6.34), and the racial composition of the sample was 67.7% White, 12.4% Black, 7.0% Asian, and 4.6% Latinx. The results indicated that young women were more likely to report a preference to postpone marriage due to pursuing career, whereas men (regardless of age) were more likely to believe that marriage is not beneficial. However, there was no gender difference in preference to cohabit. Security and age were significant negative predictors of a preference to delay marriage for women. The negative contribution of security for women only suggests that women may view postponing marriage due to career to be riskier compared to men. The significant contribution of age suggests that women become less interested in postponing marriage to achieve career goals, as they get older. Overall, younger individuals in our sample, who scored higher on universalism and achievement but lower on security values, were more likely to report a preference to postpone marriage due to career goals. In addition, older individuals in our sample, who scored lower on both tradition an benevolence values tended to believe that marriage is not beneficial. Interestingly, men and women' s values appeared to be more similar than different, and age was a stronger predictor of personal values than gender. Finally, the current results also showed that parental divorce continues to negatively impact a person's attitudes toward marriage, as it has in previous decades.