Think Before You Hitch
The so-called “starter marriage” trend.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
February 14, 2002, 10:55 a.m.

his Valentine's Day, many twenty- and thirtysomethings might be resorting to a gift from despair.com to mourn — or at least express their confusion and frustration with — the memories of their marriages past. Pamela Paul, a 30-year-old, is one of those young people, who was married for less than a year and then divorced when she and her husband realized it wasn't working.

Paul, confused about her own experience, went out and interviewed 60 former couples, and in the process wrote a book (The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony) and coined the phrase "starter marriage." A starter marriage, according to Paul, is a childless marriage that lasts no more than five years.

Starter marriages usually start young. While the age of Americans entering marriage has increased slightly over the past century (the average woman today marries at age twenty-five, the average man twenty-seven), many people still marry in their early and mid-twenties. Starter marriages end young too, with divorce papers often delivered before the thirtieth-birthday candles are blown out.

According to census numbers released earlier this month, for people under 45 about half of first marriages end in divorce, and the marriages tend to last about eight years.

Paul blames a "matrimania culture" that sets unrealistically high expectations for marriage. She says that people of her (and my) generation focus so much on the wedding day that they don't see beyond it until the big day is through. And then they realize they don't really want what they've got.

But the phrase "starter marriage" is a bit misleading. Paul suggests it "may very well be the wave of the future." But that gives it much more credit than it deserves. And in doing that — and in making it official as a trend — it's also defining young love and matrimony down.

What the 60 couples Paul interviews point to is an irresponsibility and immaturity — and not just among the Generation-X kids who get hitched without thinking what they are doing. The larger community — the parents (who may be divorced), schools, churches, etc. — needs to better consider the message it is sending out about marriage.

As "Why Marriage Matters," a new study from the Institute for American Values, points out, "marriage is more than a private emotional relationship. It is also a social good."

The study also highlights a very untrendy point: "Communities where good enough marriages are common have better outcomes for children, women, and men than do communities suffering from high rates of divorce, unmarried childbearing, and high-conflict or violent marriages." Obviously exempting marriages where violence is an element, those "starter marriage" kids might be too quick to quit. So long as the first-run marriage is a trend, they might even figure they're almost expected to.

In fairness, Paul seems to be on an honest quest both as a demographer and as a young divorced woman — and to her credit, she spares the reader an airing of her personal marital laundry. While she is short on solutions, she does not say that cohabitation is an answer. Nor does she paint a pretty picture of divorce. But there is a certain resignation. At least, she says in interviews, starter-marriage veterans want to marry again.

And so the starter marriage is more like a first job — the one you get for some experience. But Paul's "starter marriage" discovery is not alone on the bookstore shelf in softening the edge of divorce. E. Mavis Hetherington's Divorce Reconsidered suggests that divorce isn't as bad as we think it is — while still admitting, for instance, that between 20 percent and 25 percent of the children of divorce suffer from long-term emotional problems. While starter marriages, by definition, involve no kids, think of the long-term possibilities for the future of marriage. Paul cites a demographer who predicts that in the next century, we'll be marrying four times within our lifetimes. And why not — indeed, why even wait till the next century — if each marriage just better prepares us for the next one? Practice makes perfect.

The other danger lies in viewing these "starter marriages" as a normal trend. Considering early, failed marriages as a warm-up for the real thing can only lead to an eventual discounting of young marriage itself. To avoid divorce — if any stigma is still assigned to it, by then — marrying in the early and mid twenties will simply be discouraged. Work on your careers, ladies. Establish "independence." Marry in your thirties. Reproductive technologies will make all things possible, so don't sweat the biological clock. But that's not a good message either. After all, for every Drew Barrymore and Tom Green, there's a Dick and Lynn Cheney and a Don and Joyce Rumsfeld.

Paul says, "It's time for all of us — single, engaged, married, divorced, remarried, widowed — to figure out what starter marriages are, why people jump into them and then jump out, and whether they're worth it."

What we X-ers need to consider is that when "they say our love won't pay the rent," they might be onto something — before we take the plunge. Premarital counseling — whether from a religious or other professional source — should be considered part of the wedding process. And even if you have spent a year planning, it's still better to be a runaway bride than to take "for better or for worse" in the short-term.