Federally-Funded Ad Campaign Holds Up Value of Marriage
These conflicted feelings haven’t gone without notice in Washington.
Carrie and Joe Burns of St. Louis are 24 and 26. They met when she was 16 and he was 18 and dated for eight years. Then they lived together for nine months. Then they were engaged an additional 18 months. They finally got married in August.
For Katie D’Hondt, 18, of Grosse Pointe, Mich., "marriage isn’t something I think about right now." The University of Michigan freshman hasn’t yet even decided on a major.
The average age at first marriage is now almost 26 for women and 28 for men. And a growing percentage of Americans aren’t marrying at all: Provisional federal statistics released Tuesday report 7.1 marriages per 1,000 people in 2008, down from 10 per 1,000 in 1986.
"We’re not telling people ‘Get married’ but ‘Don’t underestimate the benefits of marriage,’ " says Paul Amato, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist and adviser to the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, which is spearheading the campaign. Read here
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