Zbyněk K.

“If everything you offered wasn’t enough, offer your absence” - Mario Benedetti “The 15 Million Men America Has Lost to Marriage America has a problem that is remarkably difficult to discuss without changing the subject: young men are disappearing from marriage. In 2000, there were 20.7 million unmarried men aged 20–39 and 18.1 million married men—a gap of 2.6 million. By 2025, there were 30.4 million unmarried men but only 15.4 million married men. The gap had exploded to roughly 15 million. That is not a minor cultural adjustment. It is a demographic earthquake. The explanation cannot simply be that men have become unwilling to “grow up.” Economic and educational changes matter. Unpartnered men have lower education, employment and earnings than partnered men. In 2019, 26% of unpartnered prime-working-age men had a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of partnered men. Meanwhile, women have made enormous gains in education and economic independence. Marriage is therefore no longer an economic necessity for women to the same extent it once was. The consequences are visible. In 1980, 63% of Americans aged 25 were married; by 2021, only 22% were. The share with a child fell from 39% to 17%. By 2021, one quarter of 40-year-olds had never married, compared with 6% in 1980. And 39.5% of U.S. births in 2024 occurred outside marriage. None of this proves that marriage guarantees happiness, or that being unmarried makes someone dysfunctional. Nor does the 15-million figure mean 15 million men will never marry. But pretending that family formation is irrelevant is equally absurd. A society cannot manufacture spouses for people. Nor should it. But it can create conditions in which work, competence, responsibility, commitment and family formation are attainable—and respected. Instead, we have increasingly normalised economic dependence, digital isolation and permanent adolescence while treating personal choice as though it has no social consequences. The 15-million gap is therefore more than a marriage statistic. It is a warning that millions of young men are failing to make the transition into the responsibilities of adult life” - ChatGPT