Analysts say a widening gap between married and unmarried men under 40 is changing how Americans look at wedlock, as economic and social changes drive more young people to shun traditional family arrangements.
Roughly twice as many men aged 18 to 39 were unmarried rather than married in 2025 — way more than 25 years ago. The Institute for Family Studies estimated there were 15 million more bachelors than husbands in this age group last year, compared with a 2.6-million difference in 2000.
The conservative think tank counted 30.4 million single men in 2025, up 47% from 20.7 million in 2000. In the same period, the number of married men dropped by 15%, from 18.1 million to 15.4 million.
“Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair, and unhappy,” said institute senior fellow Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist. “It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited and unhappy young men.”
Mr. Wilcox noted that marriage and childrearing rates have dropped fastest among working-class men, driven by social changes depriving them of traditional role models. He flagged a growing share of boys growing up fatherless, playing video games and addicted to social media.
“The digital revolution has exacted a major toll on their social skills, their opportunities to mix and mingle, and their educational attainment,” he added. “Our schools also do them a disservice, as they tend not to cater to the interests and educational orientations of boys.”
The report builds on years of research that shows men leading a trend of young people postponing or rejecting marriage, reducing the number of nuclear families.
According to the Census Bureau, 25% of 40-year-olds reported never having married in 2021, up from 6% in 1980. That included 28% of men and 22% of women.
Census Bureau data shows that roughly 18% of men aged 40–64 had never been married in 2024, up from 8.1% in 2000. In 2024, the bureau’s American Community Survey found that 9.3 million of 51 million men in this age group had never been married.
Men and family formation
Several analysts interviewed by The Washington Times noted that young men have increasingly struggled to succeed academically or land high-paying jobs, making them less likely to own a car, buy a house and attract a marriage partner.
They added that blue-collar wages are stagnating, pushing men to settle for cohabitation in low-paying gig jobs or pursue advanced education that delays marriage past age 40.
“Economic instability plays a major role,” said Donna R. Turner, an educational psychologist in Indiana. “When wages are unstable, and housing feels out of reach, many men feel they cannot qualify as husbands. Women are understandably reluctant to tie their futures to economic precarity.”
Ms. Turner estimated that roughly 42% of working-class men are married today, down from 73% in 1980.
Men with advanced degrees and higher incomes continue to wed but later in life than in the past.
Meanwhile, American women have grown choosier about marriage partners and more prone to raise children alone as their wages and education level increase.
“Women have less structural need for marriage than past generations did,” said Angelica Gianchandani, a New York University finance instructor. “Rising income and education give many women a financial independence marriage once provided, and donor sperm and fertility treatment have decoupled motherhood from a partner altogether.”
Ms. Gianchandani noted that women comprise roughly 60% of college students, up from 41% in 1970, further shrinking “the pool of men many women consider a match.”
“Folks assigned female at birth have finally gotten a taste of both informational and financial independence,” said Bernadette Bowen, a feminist author and gender studies expert. “Cis-[gendered] men haven’t stepped up and/or are sexually violent, so folks they would choose to partner with are partnering with them less and less.”
Some researchers noted that since the 2010s, men have become more likely than young women to identify as religious and conservative.
Gallup reported in April that 42% of men aged 18-29 described religion as “very important” to their lives in 2024 and 2025, up from 28% in 2022 and 2023. That was higher than the 30% of women who said the same, and was the first time in 25 years of polling that men outpaced women on the question.
“People are less likely to pursue relationships with those they are not compatible with ideologically,” said Michael New, a professor of social research at the Catholic University of America.
Overall, the numbers show that more Americans are not marrying or having children at all, not merely delaying wedlock.
According to the latest Census Bureau data, 47% of households were headed by married couples last year, down from 78.8% in 1949.
The federal agency counted 39.7 million one-person homes in 2025. That was 29% of all households, up from 20% in 1975.
The bureau also estimated that fertility dropped to a record low of 53.1 births per 1,000 childbearing-aged women last year, well below the replacement rate needed to sustain the population without more immigration.
Economists say that means fewer people to fill skilled jobs, contribute to the economy and pay into the Social Security tax base as wealth becomes more correlated with marriage.
“Prolonged delays in partnering, marriage and childbearing can become self-reinforcing demographic phenomena that are extremely difficult to reverse,” said Peter C. Earle, head of research at the free-market American Institute for Economic Research. “A sustained increase in never marrying is more concerning than merely marrying at 30 instead of 23.”
But John Tamny, president of the Parkview Institute economic think tank and editor of RealClearMarkets, rejected drawing any “apocalyptic nonsense” conclusions from the data.
“Declining family formation has always arrived alongside rising wealth, not poverty,” Mr. Tamny said. “People adjust to the situation around them.”
Changing roles
The Pew Research Center projects that roughly one in four current young adults will not have married by their mid-40s to mid-50s, a record high.
At the same time, the share of children born to unwed mothers has surged. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children born out of wedlock increased from 33.2% of all live births in 2000 to roughly 40% in 2023, the last year of available data.
Some analysts noted that men have struggled more than women to adjust to changing gender roles. They cited years of research showing that unmarried men are less likely to contribute to the economy and more likely to end up depressed and suicidal.
“Women’s expectations of what their partners could or should bring to the table have risen at a time when many men’s capacity to meet these expectations economically and emotionally has been squeezed,’ said Mirjam Quinn, a Chicago-based marriage and family psychologist.
Aqualus Gordon, a psychology professor specializing in men’s issues at Maryville College in Tennessee, said the tradition of men initiating courtship and women accepting it has broken down on both sides.
He cited a report from Pew that found 73% of 12th-grade boys wanted to marry someday in 2023, little changed from 76% who said the same in 1993. Over the same period, the share of girls expecting to marry dropped from 83% to 61%.
“Perhaps women who aren’t pursuing college, advanced degrees, or professional careers are more open to ’settling down’ or doing so earlier, and are thereby more receptive to courtship and marriage proposals from men,” Mr. Gordon said in an email. “Demographically, these women are more likely to be conservative and/or women of color.”
According to the Census Bureau, the share of never-married men older than 15 increased from roughly 26% in 1960 to about 39% last year.
A separate study from Bowling Green University found that the share of unmarried adults between 30 and 39 years old jumped from 15% in 1960 to 48% in 2024.
Conservatives have long argued that such trends are unsustainable.
“This is a five-alarm fire for the American family,” said Walker Wildmon, vice president of the conservative American Family Association. “America desperately needs a cultural shift that once again calls young men to embrace work, marriage, fatherhood, responsibility, and the privilege of building strong families.”
Hadley Heath Manning, a senior fellow for family and culture at Independent Women, said marriage has increasingly become a capstone rather than a cornerstone of life for emerging adults who spend more time online than dating.
“Young men aren’t doing as well in the economy today,” she said. “This makes them less attractive in the dating world, but ironically, they’d likely be having more success in the economy if they were married.”
Rebuilding stability
Several economists predicted that marriage and birth rates will only enjoy a resurgence when working-class men regain financial stability.
They expressed skepticism that that will happen anytime soon, but cautioned against declaring the nuclear family dead.
“Not every young man needs to go for a four-year college degree,” said Siri Terjesen, an associate business dean at Florida Atlantic University. “America can make investments in apprenticeship and skilled trades programs that will lead to good economic outcomes.”
According to the Census Bureau, the median age at first marriage for American men is now around 31 years old, up from 23.5 years in 1975.
That number will keep climbing unless institutions find a way to normalize workplace relationships and other alternative marriage paths, said Scott Beaulier, a University of Wyoming economist.
“Improving educational attainment, labor-force attachment, housing affordability and opportunities for young adults to become economically independent would probably do more than any explicitly pro-marriage government program,” Mr. Beaulier said.
“You cannot manufacture marriages through public policy,” he added. “But you can make it easier for young people who want marriage, children, and a home to believe those goals are attainable.”
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