Marriage has been a thing for 23,000 years. It likely started out as pairs of males and females staying together to increase the chances of their offspring surviving, but eventually it gained roles. Men were stronger and were able to leave children to work the land, while women stayed in the home to care for children. The deal was essentially to work in a unit like that to raise the kid, and never wander off and start a new family. Marriage began as a legal contract to ensure that these relations worked and both parties followed through on their half, for the good of the children. Marriage was created with these roles as a survival strategy to keep offspring alive. Though it has been thousands of years since its creation, this tradition of marriage has only just started to change.  

Now the number of Americans who aren’t married and never will be is at a historic high, and this could be a good thing. One reason marriage rates are dropping is because fewer people are religious. Many people do not feel the need to honor traditions in religions that they don’t follow ot to prove their love to a god they don’t believe in. Another reason that marriage is becoming scarce because now women aren’t raised with the end goal of marriage being planted in their minds. It used to be that women were told that their only job in the world was to get married and have kids, but now women are raised mostly the same as men and allowed to have aspirations outside of starting a family. With most people going to college and starting work through their 20’s. About 27% of unmarried people say that they don’t think that they are financially stable enough for a relationship or marriage and that could be the biggest reason that people aren’t getting married. Many people view marriage as settling down when they are financially stable and can afford to have kids, move to the suburbs, retire, or get a divorce someday. In this economy few are completely financially stable and secure. One population with the highest marriage rates are celebrities. They are the most commonly married and in the most relationships, because they do not have to worry about not being able to afford the relationships. A cheaper alternative that many are taking to marriage is living together and loving each other without spending thousands of dollars on it and if the relationship doesn’t work they can move out and not have to go through an expensive divorce. Marriage isn’t relevant anymore but love still can be.