Once upon a time, little American girls grew up with the simple belief that if you were brave and kind enough, your story would end with “happily ever after.” Today, for many young women, that expectation has shifted to something closer to “never happy after.”
New polls from Pew, an independent research firm, show a striking change in the way older girls think about marriage. In 1993, more than 83% of graduating girls said they were likely to get married. Yet today that share has fallen to about 61%. The interest among boys has hardly changed and remains around 74%.
This is not simply a case of young people turning away from their commitment. Instead, it’s a story about young women in particular losing faith in marriage as a desirable goal, and that change should concern anyone who cares about happiness, loneliness, or even life expectancy.
DIGITAL ISOLATION IS CRUSHING YOUNG MEN – FRATERNITIES HAVE A PROVEN SOLUTION
Research has consistently shown that married people are happier, less lonely, and live longer than their unmarried peers. Yet the national marriage rate has fallen sharply: by 31% since 2000 and by about 65% since 1970.
For years, much of the discussion about the decline in marriage has focused on men, and on issues such as boys falling behind in school, struggling to find rewarding jobs, and retreating to screens, scrolling, porn, and isolation. Yet this new data suggests that something is also changing in the way young women imagine their futures, and those shifts in imagination often shape what a generation comes to see as possible or worthwhile.
There are certainly several reasons for this shift. A contributing factor to girls being less interested in marriage is the stories and narratives they have absorbed since childhood. Disney once made it routine for heroes and heroines to finish their stories by finding true love and a life together. In the 1980s and 1990s, films like “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “Mulan” offered a final scene that saw the central couple moving toward a shared life.
But suddenly that scenario stopped. After “Tarzan,” in 1999, the classic happily ever after ending associated with marriage all but disappeared. Aside from “Tangled” in 2010, and perhaps “Gnomeo and Juliet” the following year, Disney no longer ended its central stories with a joyful wedding. Now heroines don’t so much fall in love as discover themselves. Instead of committing to a commitment, the main character embarks on a life of independent fulfillment. Instead of hearts and a carriage, the final image is now more likely to be the lonely heroine standing confidently alone on a mountain or a throne.
If a girl spends her childhood watching stories and hearing messages from authorities that treat marriage as marginal, optional, or even a limitation, should it be any surprise if she doesn’t view marriage as a cornerstone of her hope for adulthood?
Parents often reinforce this new script without intending to do so. We encourage our daughters to get their education in order first, build a career, be able to pay their own bills and never have to depend on anyone. It is wisdom to want our children to be capable and financially secure. But when the strongest message is that needing someone else is a kind of failure, it becomes harder for some young women to see marriage as anything other than a risk to that hard-earned independence.
The truth is that none of us are truly independent. We come into the world unable to do anything for ourselves, we grow up because a family raised us and cares for us, we depend on others for our entire adult lives, and most who grow into old age will depend on caregivers. The people who can best cope with this reality are not those who insist on being alone, but those who build strong, stable relationships of mutual love and support.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS ADVICE
If fewer young women prioritize choosing the path of marriage, the consequences will not be limited to the wedding industry. Over time, we can expect more loneliness, more isolation, less happiness, an even lower birth rate, weaker communities and shorter lives.
So, what do we do about it?
Well, our response cannot simply be to lecture or berate young adults for not valuing involvement. We need to provide them with better stories and more compelling examples. Parents, church leaders, and teachers need to do a better job of encouraging young people from childhood on to understand that the best science shows that prioritizing marriageable relationships is the surest path to happiness and personal fulfillment. It means speaking honestly about what a healthy marriage looks like, not as a flawless fairy tale, but as a beautiful project worth the sacrifice.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
We can also help young men and women understand that most first marriages last a lifetime and that choosing someone worthy of healthy dependence is not weakness, but wisdom. They should know that prioritizing a shared life of self-sacrifice often proves to be richer and more meaningful than a carefully guarded solitary life pursuing superficial consumerism.
For a generation of girls, the script has quietly shifted from “happily ever after” to something closer to “happily never.” If we care about their future and the future of our society, we must start rewriting that ending, not by returning to nostalgia, but by telling the truth that for most of us, a life given and received in lasting love is still the deepest version of happily ever after we are likely to find.
