In defense of getting married

On an intellectual level, I’ve never regretted the decision, though many times, mostly in the darker moments following some breakup, I have wondered what might have happened if I’d chosen love over $23,000 a year and the promise of an exciting future in print publishing. At 30, I found myself still single. And, yes: I had a cat. That was fine; I also had lots of friends and a job I loved. Being single neither upset me nor convinced me that I was better off alone. And yet: Was there something more?

Members of an increasingly vocal anti-marriage movement say that people like me – women and men too busy climbing professional ladders in our 20s and 30s to put similar effort into our relationships – are contributing to the steady demise of heterosexual marriage, and good riddance. There are numbers to back up the contention, at least the part about marriage’s decreasing cultural heft: According to a much discussed recent study by the Pew Research Center, marriage rates are at a record low in the United States, and they’re getting even lower. Barely half of all adults are married, with the number of new marriages decreasing by 5 percent just from 2009 to 2010. Here in Massachusetts, 49 percent of us are married – down 5 percentage points since 2000 – and 33 percent have never been married, up 5 percentage points over the same period.

While economic insecurity has contributed to the decline, with couples waiting to marry until they have a sizable nest egg or can afford a fancy reception, or both, the issue is really more philosophical: Marriage, many pundits argue, is an inherently oppressive and increasingly unhip institution. Another Pew survey, this one conducted in 2010, reported that nearly 4 in 10 Americans, more if you ask only those under 50, considered marriage passe, like Uggs and tuna casserole. What marriage is not is a viable life choice for nonconformist and evolved freethinkers.