Increasing Indifference to the Institution of Marriage

One of the most important goals of the American Family Survey is to track attitudes across time, including attitudes about marriage — and this year, we find that Americans value marriage less than they once did.

Over the past seven years, Americans express increasingly lower levels of support for the ideas that marriage is needed to create strong families, that marriage makes people better off financially, or that society is better off with more married people. There are no massive drops in agreement with these statements, but support for each has trended in a negative direction by around 10 percentage points.

In contrast, the idea that a sense of commitment is more important than marriage is trending up by about the same margin. A majority of Americans agree with that sentiment. Outright opposition is relatively rare — fewer than 20% of Americans agree with the idea that marriage is “old fashioned” or “more of a burden than a benefit,” but they do not recognize its benefits or virtues as much as they once did.

And it is important to recognize that there is a slide in intensity of preferences as well. Consider these tables that show the shift within “agreement” between 2018 and 2025.

The pattern is clearly that the group who “strongly” agrees with these claims has slid by around seven to 10 percentage points and the group that merely “somewhat agrees” is growing, with some people sliding off of the agreement side in these years. All of this is consistent with the idea of a growing indifference to marriage as an institution that is important for families. Agreement remains, but only “somewhat.”

What is driving this shift away from full agreement? It may be tempting to assume this is a culture war issue with progressives souring on marriage, and in a sense that is true.

In 2018 a quarter of Democrats agreed or strongly agreed (and we will switch to that definition for the balance of this to emphasize the people who agree most strongly) with the idea that society was better off with more married people. Today that number is just 11% — a figure so low that it approaches unanimity among Democrats, at least in their lack of enthusiasm for marriage as a social good.

Yet while it is true that the political left has soured on marriage by about 14 percentage points, the drop among Republicans over the same period is even larger at 21 points. For proponents of marriage and family ties across the political spectrum, the sad truth of the matter is that marriage is losing popularity in a universal fashion. Democrats and progressives look like they have particularly soured on marriage because they are at such a low level of agreement with the idea of marriage making society better off. But that is in large measure because they started at a low level to begin with. The overall trend is away from support for marriage, and it extends across the board.

There are age differences. For instance, among people over age 40, 48% agree that marriage makes society better off, while under age 40 the number is just 40%. And there are educational differences. Among those with a high school education, just 42% agree, while among those with a bachelor’s degree or more, the percentage is 49%. But however one slices this, the numbers are falling over time.

Other questions show a similar trend. The idea that marriage makes people better off financially is agreed to by 51% of Republicans and just 25% of Democrats (down from 66% and 37% since 2018). The gap is even bigger when it comes to marriage being needed to create strong families, with 61% of Republicans and just 19% of Democrats agreeing (again down from 73 percent and 29 percent in 2018). It is worth noting that family scholars tend to agree with both of these statements. Marriage contributes to stable families and the rearing of children, and it is strongly associated with better financial outcomes for everyone, both parents and children.

Again, the truly negative statements about marriage — that marriage is old-fashioned and more of a burden than a benefit — are not seeing any real spikes in agreement. People are not overtly hostile to marriage, but they are becoming indifferent to it. They simply do not see its utility or its advantages. And fewer Americans, particularly on the political left, are getting married.

Republicans are more likely to be married at every age level before age 50. Pure independents are least likely to be married, but Democrats lag Republicans by about 15 percentage points on average.

But note that there are essentially no differences in divorce rates. Democrats and progressives are not getting married at the same rate as Republicans and conservatives are. However, once married, they remain at essentially the same rate as other groups (though independents divorce at somewhat higher rates than Republicans.).

What are we to make of this data? While it is never wise to exaggerate or catastrophize data, we see real cause for concern here. As noted above, marriage is broadly a beneficial institution that helps lift people out of poverty, alleviate loneliness, and provide stable homes for kids. We also find that 39% of unmarried Americans report experiencing at least one economic crisis in the past year, compared to 29% of married Americans. Marriage is not a perfect institution — abusive relationships and other problems deserve serious attention. But in our view, people should broadly support marriage for all of its benefits.

Indifference to marriage — especially if it leads to fewer people entering the institution — is not a healthy sign for the American public. On an individual level, it means that more people may simply miss out on the benefits of marriage. But on a social level, we note that people increasingly bemoan the cost of children, worry about inequality, and want to build a stronger society. Families help with all of that.

Indifference to marriage suggests a complacency and a lack of energy that is likely to have costs in the future. Public opinion surveys are hardly good signposts to what those costs might be, but we believe there will be costs in the long run. Proponents of marriage across the political spectrum should face the fact that public attitudes are turning downward on this institution and a better understanding of why attitudes are shifting, leading to new arguments and actions, are probably necessary if we want to arrest this trend.

METHODOLOGY NOTE

Between August 6-18, 2025, YouGov interviewed 3317 nationally representative respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file).

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 propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region, and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 and 2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (four categories), race (four categories), and education (four categories) to produce the final weight. The overall margin of error is +/- 2.1%.