Since its peak in 1972, marriage rates have fallen by 76.1% for men and by 70.7% for women. Furthermore, the age at marriage for opposite-sex couples has steadily decreased since 1970, according to the ONS. There was, however, a post-Covid increase in marriages due to a backlog; but the decline continued after this. Meanwhile, social media makes it seem as though getting married in one’s twenties is rising in popularity. Not only among celebrities and influencers either; a surprisingly large number of people around my age from my hometown are engaged or married. As someone who is yet to experience romantic love (cue the world’s smallest violin), it’s difficult to comprehend the appeal of making such big decisions as marriage and children in our early to mid twenties. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with settling down young, but I wanted to find out if perceptions about marriage might be changing and if they are connected to broader trends, like an ostensible rise in conservative social values and discourses about loneliness.
Firstly, religion is a common reason for early marriage. Being cynical, I would assume that this is due to the tradition of abstaining from premarital sex. On a more sympathetic note, many religious folk get married young due to a faith that they have met the right person, and they see no reason to wait around. I admire the sentiment that their decision to marry is typically about the commitment before God, more so than an extravagant party. There has been an increase in religious belief among 18-24-year-olds, with a 2025 YouGov poll showing that 37% believe in God in some form, as opposed to 16% in August 2021. We can speculate that this is a response to the climate crisis, economic instability, and political strife, leading to a search for meaning, community, and hope, among other things.
Nevertheless, organised religion and its traditions certainly hold less sway over people than it has in decades past. In 1970, the average age of first marriage was 23, the lowest it had been throughout the 20th century. Whereas now, the average age of first marriage is around 31. Several factors can be cited: “an increase in education which delays the start of partnership formation, a rise in cohabitation before or instead of marriage, and the declining cultural relevance of the institution of marriage.” Evidently, the UK has changed in many ways since the post-war years. In 1978, the average wage of a woman in the UK was around half that of a man. Additionally, it wasn’t until the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act that, among other clauses, it became illegal to discriminate against someone “on the grounds of his or her marital status”. This meant that women could open a bank account, get a mortgage or a loan, etc. without her husband’s signature.
Nowadays, although there is still a long way to go in terms of equality, women no longer need to have their financial wellbeing tied to their fathers or husbands. Therefore, there is more freedom to choose whether to get married, and it is now somewhat less stigmatised to be contentedly unattached as a woman in your 20s and 30s. What’s more, the ‘happiest’ demographic is said to be single, childless women, according to a 2024 study. Some of the reasons include strong “social support beyond romantic relationships” and “inequities within heterosexual relationships, including inequitable divisions of household labour and the deprioritisation of women’s sexual pleasure”, which results in “more rewards for men and more costs for women in committed heterosexual partnerships.”
It is difficult to find a good partner in a world where dating apps are still widely used. They have largely ruined dating culture, due to the paradox of choice, the lack of accountability and a reduction in the possibility of in-real-life connections and rejection. Hundreds of thousands of users have left the four biggest dating apps in the past couple of years amid an increased romanticisation of and desire for organic ‘meet-cutes’. It seems I’m not alone in believing that my future husband almost certainly isn’t on Hinge. In this landscape, I don’t anticipate that marriage rates in the UK will be on the rise any time soon, and it is heartening that marriage is not seen as a universal marker of success to the extent that it used to be.
All in all, the trend of getting married young seems to be yet another example of influencers and celebrities’ lifestyles needlessly setting arbitrary standards regarding when we ‘should’ reach various milestones.
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