Men Thirty to Fifty Less Likely to Want to Marry

I was reading over the Pew Research Center study on marriage this morning and saw this factoid:

Men and women’s attitudes about marrying for the first time are not different among young adults. But among never-married adults ages 30 to 50, men (27%) are more likely than women (8%) to say they do not want to marry.

Twenty-seven percent to 8% is a big gap. It’s no wonder that women in the same age group have a hard time finding men. As men get older, perhaps they get wiser to the hazards of marriage for men, or perhaps those who are in the older age groups had less interest to begin with. However, as the age of marriage increases to nearly thirty for men (census data shows it to be up to 29 as of 2011), perhaps more will join in the unmarried group.

More from Dr. Helen: Is 25 the New 15?