Two thirds of US adults still believe in marriage, a newly published survey suggests.
Texas organisation the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture polled a total of 15,738 people between the ages of 18 and 60 on their attitudes to family life. Asked whether the concept of marriage had become outdated, only ten per cent of the respondents agreed, with an overwhelming 66 per cent insisting that matrimony was still relevant in the 21st Century.
In results that suggest a conservative attitude to family life still prevails in parts of the US, a surprising 25 per cent of the respondents said they were opposed to cohabitation without marriage, and only 44 per cent said they thought it was acceptable. Thirty per cent said they neither opposed nor supported cohabitation.
One fifth of the women surveyed, compared to only 13 per cent of the men, admitted to thinking about leaving their partner over the previous year. In a finding consistent with other research, women were more also likely than men to actually go ahead and file for divorce.
Close to 90 per cent of the men and just over 85 per cent of the women surveyed described themselves as entirely heterosexual. “Mostly heterosexual”, meanwhile, was the self-description used by 3.5 per cent of the men and nine per cent of men. Seven per cent of the men and just under four per cent of the women said they were LGBT.
The researchers declared:
“American society has undergone a veritable revolution over the past half-century in the way in which its population understands and approaches family life, religious faith and sexuality.”
