Yesterday MSNBC.com ran a story about marriage in the United States, and how some women’s fear of becoming an old maid is relatively unlikely. The story describes “a lot of fretting” women go through for fear of never being married, despite the fact that 86% of women tie the knot by age 40. But women do appear to be waiting longer to be wed, age 25 on average, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

MSNBC.com reports:

The vast majority of women who want to marry actually do, although they’re no longer in a rush to do it. Does that mean women and men are less interested in marriage than in the past?

No! Americans love marriage compared to people in other industrialized countries. While Americans get hitched at a rate of 7.5 per every 1,000 inhabitants in a given year, the French and Germans marry at a rate of 4.5 to 4.9 per 1,000, Swedes 4.0 to 4.4, Belgians 2.8 to 3.9.

But perceptions about marriage appear to be ever-changing, as a sociologist notes:

“I always tell my students that everything we study right now could be out of date in 10 years, that’s how rapidly the social environment is changing,” said Christine Whelan, a University of Iowa sociologist and author of “Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women.”

We may idolize the perfect marriage, but need to recognize that its purpose has been redefined.

The “institutional” marriages of the 19th century were practical affairs, meant to establish family bonds, distribute property and raise children as part of a unit within a community, Whelan explained. Then, from about World War I to the early 1960s, “people married for friendship, for a division of labor — what men did and what women did — and for love and attachment,” she said.

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