Morrow

There are a lot of problems with your post, but I’m going to ignore most of them.

Marriage is has been the norm in western culture for sometime. A deviation from that does not constitute something bad in and of itself, it depends on the implementation. Also, social transition means that people have to find new ways to cope, which they are and will, this can cause some minor problems to be exacerbated.

The ‘change’ in marriage isn’t the symptom of a problem. It is a reflection of the way in which our society is ordered. At one point marriage, was a formalized method of something that was naturally occurring, lifelong cohabitation. The reason that we are seeing less marriage is that the constraints which cause lifelong cohabitation are dissolving, and new constraints are being added. The decline is marriage is individual ADAPTATION to the new factors in society.

I will not speculate on all of these causes, but I believe that economics is clearly a related factor. Our current market and economy allows people to be more self reliant than in previous generations, and means that people don’t have to stay in dissatisfying relationships, or can more on to new ones. It also means that they can raise children by themselves. Both people in a relationship now have careers, and people are no longer economically limited to the extent that one person has to sacrifice that career.

Society is an extension of human psychology, and therefore it will always be forced to adapt to the changes in the physical world, whatever they may be.