Married Americans tend to feel that their own marriages are growing stronger, but they are far more pessimistic about the trajectory of marriages generally in the United States.
Over the past decade of the American Family Survey, we have asked married Americans to evaluate the strength of their own marriages and of marriage in America more generally. When asked to evaluate the trajectory of their own marriages over the past two years, Americans tend to offer positive evaluations. The vast majority report that their marriages are either about the same or stronger, with between 4 and 5 in 10 respondents saying that their relationships are growing stronger. At no time in the past decade did more than 8 percent of respondents say their marriages had grown weaker.
We find little evidence of partisan disagreement in these evaluations. In nearly every year of the survey, the percentage of Republicans and Democrats saying their marriages had grown stronger in the past two years was nearly identical.
To the extent that assessments of marital strength differ, it is primarily by age. In 2024, for example, 75% of married respondents under 30 felt their marriages had improved in the past two years, but only one-third of those over 65 reported stronger marriages. This does not mean that older Americans believe their marriages are growing weaker. Instead, they are much more likely to feel that their marriages have remained “about the same” over the past two years. In other words, young respondents, who are more likely to be at the beginning of their relationships, see a more positive trajectory when they evaluate the past two years. Older Americans, who are more likely to be settled in long-term marriages, are more likely to feel that their marriages are holding steady. Outright pessimism about marriage trajectory is rare, though it is highest among married respondents between 45 and 54.
These generally positive assessments also emerge when we ask whether respondents think their marriage has been “in trouble” at any point in the last two years. In 2024, three-quarters of married respondents said no, and only one-quarter said yes.
We followed up with those who said their marriage has been in trouble by asking about the biggest stressors in their marriage, allowing them to select up to three items from a list of seven. By far the most common stressors were communication (58%), money (53%) and sex (41%). Raising children (21%), other (21%), in-laws or other family (16%), and work (16%) were chosen less frequently.
Again, partisan differences tend to be small to moderate. A lower percentage of Republicans (50%) than independents (62%) or Democrats (63%) chose communication as a stressor, and Republicans were somewhat more likely than independents and Democrats to identify sex as a relationship stressor (46% vs. 31% and 41%, respectively).
Instead of partisan differences, we mostly find life cycle differences in the challenges that stress marriage. For example, worries about money peak in middle age and are somewhat lower among both young and older couples. Fewer young marrieds worry about sex, but those concerns increase by age, peaking in late middle age. Relationship stresses associated with work and raising children are more common among younger couples and decline significantly in middle age. The exception to this pattern is communication. Across all age groups, majorities of respondents who worry about their marriage being in trouble cite communication as a key stress.
In addition to their own marriages, we also asked respondents to evaluate the trajectory of marriages generally in the United States. And across a decade of the American Family Survey, we find a very different pattern when Americans look outside of their own relationships to the state of marriage as an institution. Whereas a high percentage of married respondents think their own marriage has become stronger in the past two years and very few feel it has become weaker, the pattern is exactly the opposite when those same people evaluate marriage generally. Around 4 in 10 judge marriages generally to be growing weaker over the past two years, and only a small percentage — often in single digits — believe the institution of marriage is growing stronger.
The most optimistic married respondents are younger, but even among those between 18-29, fewer than 1 in 5 say that marriage is growing stronger, while more than one-third believe it is growing weaker. Older Americans are especially pessimistic. Among married Americans over 55, only 4% believe that marriage is growing stronger, while about 4 in 10 believe it is growing weaker.
Both Republicans and Democrats express pessimism about the strength of marriages generally. However, Democrats tend to be slightly more optimistic than Republicans. Across the past decade, in only one year (2019) were Republicans slightly more optimistic than Democrats. Even so, the partisan differences tend to be small in magnitude — at most 6-7 percentage points.
The striking finding is the difference in Americans’ evaluations of their own marriages, compared to marriages generally. Widespread pessimism about the state of marriage as an institution in the United States is simply not reflected in Americans’ evaluations of the relationships they know best. This feature of public opinion— more optimism about things that are close to home and more pessimism about global evaluations — is not unique to evaluations of marriage, and the result does not mean that the institution of marriage does not need strengthening in important ways. Nor does it mean that every marriage is a success, given that one-quarter of married respondents say they have worried about their marriage’s survival in the past two years. And given that some marriages don’t end up surviving, perhaps when married people evaluate the strength of marriages, they are thinking about those that end in divorce. Still, this pattern does mean that there are reasons for optimism that are not always reflected in headlines about marriage as an institution.
By Christopher F. Karpowitz and Jeremy C. Pope with research assistance by Ellie Mitchell
METHODOLOGY NOTE
Between August 22-29, 2024, YouGov interviewed 3,245 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3,000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4 categories), race (4 categories), and education (4 categories), to produce the final weight. The overall margin of error is +/- 2%.