Seniors Kristen Lee, 21, and Luke Markstrom, 22, are breaking the marriage mold. The couple is engaged and has set a July 14 wedding date. Both are applying to medical school, but instead of waiting until after, they wanted to tie the knot before.
They plan on going to the same school or at least different schools in the same city to remain close during their four years of graduate school.
While Lee and Markstrom may want to get married young, many couples have been putting it off. The median age of first marriage has increased to 28.7 for men and 26.7 for women, up from 27.5 and 25.9 respectively in 2006 according to the Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey.
Carol Bruess, family studies director, said the reasons for this are many and intertwined.
“There’s a whole host of reasons…and not one of them exists in separation from the others,” Bruess said. “One of the reasons is economic structure, so a number of people are waiting to get married now because they want to feel more economically stable and that isn’t happening as early as it used to be.”
Bruess said, more people see young adulthood as a time to explore. Since they don’t see as many people around them settling down, they don’t feel any social pressure to do so themselves.
“One of the other theories about the delayed age of first marriage is about this notion in our culture that many young adults are extending their adolescence and delaying the start of adulthood,” she said.
The final reason Bruess outlined is the rapid increase of social media services that allow people to stay connected with their family.
“With the multiple opportunities to stay connected with your parents… some family studies scholars theorize that as you stay more closely connected, you know the digital umbilical cord, that we don’t have a need as quickly to find our own family,” Bruess said.
Though it doesn’t apply to their case, Markstrom thinks that the recent increase in graduate school students is one reason for the older age of first marriage.
“There’s so many more people going to grad school and all these professional schools that they’re working on their careers more so than thinking about finding someone,” Markstrom said.
Lee agrees and thinks that the increase in women in the workforce is another factor.
“I also think that gender roles in our nation have changed a lot, so women aren’t housewives anymore,” Lee said. “They’re going out and starting a career for themselves, and that’s pushing back everything else.”
Both think that the economy is a huge factor because as Lee said, “Weddings are expensive.”
Campus Ministry’s Wedding Coordinator Christine Griffith said she has not seen the demand for weddings in the St. Thomas Chapel change.
“Apparently, the economy has a lot to do with it as folks want to have secure jobs before they get married,” Griffith said. “At this point, I have not seen this affecting the number of weddings being celebrated in the chapel.”
Senior Kelsey Swenson recently got engaged to her boyfriend of two and a half years who is serving in the Navy in Washington, D.C. After graduation she plans on moving to Virginia to be with him and said despite the national trend, “I just feel like when you know you know.”
“I just feel like a lot of people who wait til 26, 28 years old are already set in their ways,” Swenson said. “They’ve already grown individually so much that then when they go to be with someone and combine those lives it’s just so much clashing because they just don’t want to change.”
Tom Graves can be reached at grav5886@stthomas.edu.