{"id":9911,"date":"2025-11-22T12:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/?p=9911"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:39:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:39:18","slug":"interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2025\/11\/interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets.html","title":{"rendered":"Interest in Marriage Amongst High School Girls Plummets"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9914\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9914\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9914\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/413\/2025\/11\/Marriage_rates-credit-drew-coffman-unsplash.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9914\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drew Coffman \/ Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2025\/11\/14\/12th-grade-girls-are-less-likely-than-boys-to-say-they-want-to-get-married-someday\/\">Pew Research Center<\/a> poll is revealing a growing drop in interest to get married amongst 12<sup>th<\/sup> grade girls. Interest in having children also dropped. According to the study, as of 2023, 67% of US 12th graders thought they would get married someday, a drop from 80% in 1993. Of those who thought they would get married, only 48% thought they would have children, down from 64%. There were also doubts about the longevity of their marriages. Only 51% stated they believed they would be married to the same person for life, down from 89%.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest change was amongst 12<sup>th<\/sup> grade girls over their male counterparts. As of 2023, 12<sup>th<\/sup> grade boys were more likely than girls to believe they would get married (74% to 61%).\u00a0 While the numbers were mostly unchanged for boys during the 30-year period, girls had dropped from 83% in 1993 to 61%.<\/p>\n<p><em>Ms. Magazine<\/em> framed the drop in a positive light. \u201cIt\u2019s telling that the girls who no longer say marriage is on their minds largely aren\u2019t saying that they\u00a0<em>don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0want to get married; instead, they\u2019re saying that they have no idea. And good!\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/msmagazine.com\/2025\/11\/20\/high-school-girls-marriage\/\">wrote Jill Filipovic for <em>Ms<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThese are girls who are 16, 17 and 18. The average age of first marriage for American women is now nearly 29, with women who graduate from college marrying even later. Marriage, for the vast majority of high school girls, is many years away\u2014if it happens at all.\u201d Filipovic noted that there were a number of factors of why girls and women weren\u2019t thinking so much about marriage, including greater access to education and careers, as well as less cultural pressure to be married. \u201cThere are all kinds of reasons why marriage has declined, and these reasons are both material and cultural. But they aren\u2019t stemming from teenage girls,\u201d concluded Filipovice. \u201cIf anything, the teenage girls who increasingly say they aren\u2019t thinking about marriage are the smart ones. They\u00a0<em>shouldn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0be thinking about marriage at 17\u2014that\u2019s not the basis for a good marriage or a good life. And they are lucky to be growing up in a culture where they can marry for love and out of desire, rather than for money or social acceptance and out of necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JackPosobiec\/status\/1990094513486913553\">called the shift<\/a> the \u201cSex and the City effect.\u201d Other conservatives framed the decline as the effect of feminism and public school indoctrination. The Barna Institute, referencing its own study, focused on the change in social attitudes toward marriage, particularly the growth of cohabitating, even in those who attend church. \u201cWhat\u2019s more significant is the shift in social attitudes,\u201d noted Barna. 58% of all adults, 42% of practicing Christians, called living with someone before marriage \u201cwise.\u201d \u201cThis presents both a pastoral challenge and an invitation: how can churches teach a countercultural view of commitment while engaging couples with empathy rather than judgment?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Pew Research Center poll is revealing a growing drop in interest to get married amongst 12th grade girls. Interest in having children also dropped. According to the study, as of 2023, 67% of US 12th graders thought they would get married someday, a drop from 80% in 1993. Of those who thought they would&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":9914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interest in Marriage Amongst High School Girls Plummets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new Pew poll shows fewer 12th grade girls expect to marry or have children, reflecting shifting cultural values and faith challenges.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2025\/11\/interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interest in Marriage Amongst High School Girls Plummets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new Pew poll shows fewer 12th grade girls expect to marry or have children, reflecting shifting cultural values and faith challenges.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2025\/11\/interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Stronger Marriages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-22T12:39:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" 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challenges.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2025\/11\/interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Interest in Marriage Amongst High School Girls Plummets","og_description":"A new Pew poll shows fewer 12th grade girls expect to marry or have children, reflecting shifting cultural values and faith challenges.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2025\/11\/interest-in-marriage-amongst-high-school-girls-plummets.html","og_site_name":"Stronger 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