When 26-year-old Dawn Potish recently divorced, her friends created a new nickname for her: Dawn Potish, SM.
“It stands for Dawn Potish, Starter
Marriage,” explained Potish, a Chicago
consultant.
Young newlyweds used to talk about starter homes. Now they talk about starter marriages.
In an era where couples can divorce online, Britney gets hitched–and annuls it within hours–and J.Lo has a collection of wedding gowns amassed in her closet, it appears that second marriages have become the new first.
Sarah Touberg, co-author of “Not Your Mother’s Divorce,” calls it “Gen X divorce.”
In her book, Touberg (who divorced in 1999 and has since remarried) and co-author Kay Moffett outline eight reasons why modern-day unions may devolve into starter marriages. A main culprit, Touberg said, is getting married too young and outgrowing each other.
“With this generation, we’re getting married in our 20s, coming into our own in our 30s and realizing who we are now isn’t a match for the person we’ve married,” Touberg said.
Such was the case for Potish. “For me, the biggest thing was I had dated this person for six years and knew some of the tendencies he had that I didn’t like but married him anyway because that was just the next step,” she said. “Living together, I realized that our interests, our routines, our ways of life were completely different.”
For Jeff Wilson Webber, 28, a Chicago author and bartender, it was a combination of marrying too young, with too little money and, after six years of dating, not knowing what else to do.
“Figuring out how you’re going to live your life, what direction you’re taking and what city you’re going to live in–it’s a lot of stress for one person, much less for two,” he said.
Touberg said starter marriages also are symptomatic of a nuptially obsessed country.
“[From] the annual televised wedding on the ‘Today’ show to Trista and the Bachelor,” she said, “there’s still this interesting persistence in the perfect wedding.”
Potish admits falling into this trap.
“All I wanted was the wedding–to get married. I didn’t realize what that meant, to be married.”
Having gone through the experience himself, Webber said divorce seems to have become a sort of modern ritual or rite of passage among the 20s and 30s sets.
Yet David Popenoe, professor of sociology at Rutgers University and co-director of the National Marriage Project, disagrees with the portrayal of starter marriages as a rising trend. Although divorce remains rampant, the rate peaked in 1980 and has been dropping ever since–not steeply, he acknowledged, but down nonetheless.
But he said an early divorce renders you more divorce-prone than you were before.
“Just in terms of odds, if you go through a starter marriage, your chance of divorce in the second marriage is higher than what it was for the first marriage,” Popenoe said–10 percent higher, in fact.
Trend watch
The phrase “starter marriage,” defined as a childless marriage lasting less than five years, entered the mainstream lexicon in 2002, with Pamela Paul’s book, “The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony.” Paul spoke of the unrealistic expectations today’s couples have of marriage to fulfill their every need and of the difficulty in forging an identity as a couple when you haven’t yet come into your own as an individual.
– – –
By the numbers.
Although the prevalence of starter marriages may suggest otherwise, Americans are waiting longer to marry than ever before. According to the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, the median age at first marriage is 25 years old for women, 27 for men and even older for college-educated people. Recent research has suggested that this rising age–and the knowledge, education and life experience that accompany it–could be the main factor behind a recent leveling off in divorce rates.
Still, the oft-cited “50 percent” rule stands true: The likelihood that a marriage started today will end in divorce remains at about 50 percent.
But while people may be waiting longer to get hitched, they’re moving in together with reckless abandon. Unmarried cohabitation has increased by more than 1,000 percent since 1960, with more than half of all first marriages being preceded by living together.
Other marriage project statistics include:
Median age at first marriage in U.S.:
– In 1970: 23 for males, 20 for females
– In 2000: 27 for males, 25 for females
Percentage of all Americans age 15 and older who are married:
– In 1960: 69.3% men, 65.9% women
– In 2002: 57.3% men, 54.2% women
Percentage of all Americans age 15 and older who are divorced:
– In 1960: 1.8% for men, 2.6% for women
– In 1980: 4.8% for men, 6.6% for women
– In 2000: 8.3% for men, 10.2% for women
– In 2002: 8.1% for men, 10.7% for women
