"Better To Marry Than To Burn"
(or Did Paul of Tarsus get anything right?)
I have a theory based completely on anecdotal evidence and personal bias. Therefore let's call it a hypothesis. People born between the years 1966 and 1973 are pretty much incapable of marriage -- at least until their late thirties, and then only to someone not born in that time span. (At least in the U.S. Please feel free to weigh in on the topic, gentle readers.)
What makes me say this? Well, I know many people from many parts of this country born in that time span. Hardly any of them have ever been married, including me. The few that have taken the plunge are married to someone outside of the time span or are the exception that proves my untested rule.
Why aren't we marrying? Is it because marriage is an archaic, mysoginist institution? Are we emotionally stunted committment-phobes? Is it the location of Pluto in our astrological charts or the location of our heads up our anuses?
Please note: I don't think the institution of marriage has come to an end. People born after this time span seem to have no fundamental aversion to getting hitched, and people born prior to this time span seem to have nothing against getting married and even remarried, if necessary. It's simply this particular group of us avoiding the altar.
Is it possible that the Second Wave of American Feminism, occuring at the same time as the Sexual Revolution and the tarnishing of the American Dream at precisely the time we dove into this world has colored our outlook? Because -- let me be very clear -- I truly see this as an outlook, not cynicism or personal damage. Perhaps we aren't hard-wired for exclusive romantic attachment? Maybe we were designed for a level of communal living and personal independence that most marriages could not adapt to?
It isn't frivolity. It isn't meaninglessness. It's just different, an X factor.
4 comments:
It's because of the CIA experimental anti-marriage drug they were lacing the smallpox vaccine with during that time ;-) ;-) ;-)
Seriously, both me and the wifey fall within the 66-73 time frame, but we may just be aberrant blips on the radar. Maybe it has something to do with graduating and living our early twenties in the 1980s -- the ME decade, and a very fun time to be single when the Berlin Wall was coming down and there was lots of cool club music turning into grunge, and it was too much fun exploring a world changing so fast...to interesting and varied for a lot of people to attach themselves to one person. Seems like marriage rates go up when there is fear and a necessity for survival. Just thinking out loud...
I know many married people from this time frame. I think you just surround yourself with like minded people.
Ohmigod Joe! I forgot all about the CIA tampering with my vaccinations. I heard they slipped LSD in the dyp-tet. Kinda explains a whole lot.
I think you made a couple of valid points -- there was definitely this sense that it might be a better idea to skip out on the whole dominant paradigm thing, if we hoped to survive as a species. Marriage is part of that paradigm.
But, as Woodland Mama so kindly pointed out, I am probably living in an enclave of like-minded people. I went to the US census bureau website and there does not seem to be any statistical information backing up my hypothesis.
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