As depicted in the figure below, both women and men, on average, are postponing marriage, reversing the trend toward younger marriages that began in the 1940s. In 1995, the median age of women in the United States at the time of their first marriage was 25 (the median age for men was 27). Today, first marriages may be later yet.
Your task in this exercise is first to use the Internet to obtain actual marriage data from 2000 to now, then make some predictions about data points for 2020 on the graph below. In other words, what will the average age of marriage be in 2020. You may already have formulated an opinion about where the data points will be. However, before stating this opinion, see if you can explain the trends of the past as you believe the advocates of several major theories of development would.
1. How might an advocate of sociocultural theory explain the trend toward postponing marriage? What might he or she predict about the average age of marrying for women and men in the future?
2. How might an advocate of evolutionary theory explain the trend toward postponing marriage? What might he or she predict about the average age of marrying for women and men in the future?
3. How do these predictions compare with your own ideas about future trends in the average age of marrying?
