The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

Marriage was the first institution God created (Genesis 2:24-25). The following summarizes the teaching of Scripture on this bedrock institution for human civilization:

1. Marriage is the fundamental institution God created for organized civilization.  It is tied to His creation and His purpose for the human race as His image-bears who have dominion authority over His world.
2. Marriage is monogamous and heterosexual, and, from Jesus’ perspective, permanent—“what God has joined together, let no man separate”, Matthew 19:6.
3. Marriage is a commitment before God, regarded in Malachi 2:14 as a “covenant” commitment, over which God stands as a “witness.”  Indeed, Jesus states in Matthew 19:6 that “God has joined together” this union. The man and the woman have a new status before the Lord—they are husband and wife together.
4. It is therefore logical to assume that some kind of public commitment is a necessary part of marriage. Society must regard the man and the woman as a couple, now bound together; they are no longer single. Therefore, sexual intercourse alone does not constitute marriage. Cohabitation alone does not constitute marriage. There must be some kind of public commitment recognized by God and by the community.
5. Marriage is a metaphor, an archetype of the covenantal relationship between Jesus Christ and His church—see Ephesians 5:32.

Given how important marriage is to God, what is the state of this institution in the early decades of the 21st century?

Younger people are socializing less, dating less and starting to have sex later in life than previous generations. Gen Z (born roughly 1997-2012), writes Christine Emba, “came of age as the social environment fractured and courtship norms broke down—an environment that made sex scary and unappealing, dating hard to parse and substitutes for intimacy readily available. For many, online porn was an early introduction to sex, setting emotional detachment and gender antagonism as a standard. The #MeToo moment, for all its necessity, seeded widespread anxiety among young men and women both. Covid-enforced social isolation in their formative years made practicing real-world relationship skills (romantic and otherwise) nearly impossible, and the rise of dating apps made sure that Gen Z-ers continued to view all romantic possibilities through the filter of the smartphone screen, even if they might have preferred otherwise. Parents played a role, too, pushing their children to prioritize education and achievement while neglecting to advise on love . . . Layer on top of all this a broader feeling of precariousness and anxiety about the future and their place in it when traditional paths to stability and status seem to be slipping away. By this logic, it makes more sense to turn inward than to make oneself vulnerable, to nihilistically maxx rather than actually encounter the other.”

Emba, furthermore, summarizes recent research:  “Multiple studies show that young people aren’t dating, having sex or forming partnerships. A recent survey of young adults from the Institute for Family Studies and Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute found that only 30 percent of its respondents were actively dating, despite about half of them indicating that they were interested in finding a relationship. They cited a lack of confidence in what the researchers termed ‘dating efficacy’: Less than 40 percent believed themselves to be attractive to potential partners or felt comfortable discussing their feelings with them. Only around a quarter felt confident in approaching a potential partner or in their ability to stay positive after a dating setback—a rejection, a bad date or a breakup. If trends continue, one in three adults currently in their 20s will never marry, contributing to an epidemic of loneliness that is already generationally acute.  For younger adults, romance has turned into something to be debated, theorized and optimized for but not actually engaged in. As Gen Z retreats into itself while pretending to focus on the other, the delta between the sexes grows wider.”

In addition, The Economist summarizes additional research results and then speculates on where all of this is headed:  “So the speed with which the norm of marriage—indeed, of relationships of any sort—is being abandoned is startling. Throughout the rich world, singlehood is on the rise. Among Americans aged 25-34, the proportion living without a spouse or partner has doubled in five decades, to 50% for men and 41% for women. Since 2010, the share of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 rich countries. By The Economist’s calculation, the world has at least 100m more single people today than if coupling rates were still as high as in 2017. A great relationship recession is under way.”

How do we explain this development?

• As “barriers to women in the workplace have fallen, their choices have expanded. They are far more able than in the past to live alone if they choose, and face less social stigma for doing so. The more they can support themselves financially, the less likely they are to put up with an inadequate or abusive partner. This shift has saved countless women from awful relationships, and forced many men to treat their mates better if they want to stay together . . . [This] can be liberating, but it can also be lonely. Plenty of singletons say they are content to remain so, especially women. But surveys in various countries suggest that 60-73% would rather be in a relationship. A poll in America in 2019 found that, although 50% of singles were not actively looking for a partner, only 27% said this was because they enjoyed being single. Many have given up, either because they despair of finding a mate, or because they don’t rate the mates on offer.”
• “Some think social media and dating apps have fostered unrealistic expectations (other people’s relationships look fabulous on Instagram) and excessive pickiness (most women on Bumble reportedly insist that a male must be six feet tall, thus filtering out 85% of potential matches).
• Another problem is the growing political gulf between young men and women, with the former leaning right and the latter leaning more to the left. Many singles insist that any partner must tick the same partisan boxes, which makes matching trickier.
• Other experts point to a decline in social skills as people spend more of their lives gawping at screens. “Americans of all ages socialize less in person than they did two decades ago, but the decline is especially steep among the young. Social media spread fears that women will be assaulted if they go out; and that men will be digitally shamed if a date goes badly.”
• Women are more likely than men to say that they want their mate to be well educated and financially solid. More men are failing to clear this moving bar, as they fall behind women educationally and the less bookish ones flounder in the job market. Men with no college degree and low earnings struggle to attract a partner.”
• In Finland and Sweden roughly a third of adults live alone. At the very least, the shift is likely to exacerbate the already dramatic fall in global fertility, since single-parenting is hard and cultural taboos against it remain strong in many regions. Since young, single men commit more violent crimes, a less-coupled world could be more dangerous.
• Marriage rates are falling across much of Asia, including in China and India and especially Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. And singlehood is accelerating across different age cohorts. In Europe each new generation is less likely to be married or living with a partner than previous ones at the same age.
• “New technology not only fosters pickiness about whom to date, it also absorbs a lot of time, leaving less for socializing and group activities—tried-and-tested ways of meeting partners. ‘People who spend their late teens and 20s watching television, playing computer games or chatting with AIs may be reducing their chances of ever finding a mate, since they are missing their best chance to hone their dating skills and learn how to weather the ups and downs of relationships.’”

The Economist reflects on additional consequences of falling marriage rates: “Even relatively small shifts in coupling rates, when multiplied across a whole population, can have far-reaching effects on society as a whole. The biggest impact will be on fertility rates, since married women tend to have more children than single ones. This will be especially marked in East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, where only 2-4% of babies are born to unmarried mothers. All the world over, however, the rise of singlehood will be a further drag on already slowing birth rates. The effects will also be felt in property markets (more demand for housing, since more people will be living alone) and government finances (less public spending on maternity wards and schools and, in time, more on care homes).”

How pervasive is singlehood worldwide?

• In Asia, where singlehood is growing fastest, a mix of structural and cultural changes is increasing incompatibility. Start with demography. China’s one-child policy has created a huge imbalance in the ratio of men to women. When it comes to those of peak marriageable age, the country will have 119 men for every 100 women by 2027. In all, there may be 30m-50m “excess men” in China, reckons Xiaoling Shu of the University of California, Davis. Singlehood in China, like most places, is not evenly distributed. Instead, it is disproportionately concentrated among men who are poorer and poorly educated, and thus less attractive as mates, and among highly educated women.
• Sex-selective abortions resulted in 111 boys being born in India in 2011 for every 100 girls, according to census data. The natural ratio is about 105. Although the distortion has since become less extreme, we calculate that around 20m more boys than girls were born in India in 2000-15.
• “In South Korea, the gap between women’s opportunities and men’s sexist expectations is particularly wide. Around half of young Korean men think they are discriminated against (other than having to do military service, they are not). Some 60% complain that feminism demeans them. They also tend to be terrible slouches when it comes to housework. Little wonder, then, that ambitious young women are far less keen on marriage than they are.”
• A similar pattern of singlehood pertains in America and Europe, despite their less ingrained gender roles. Until roughly the middle of the 20th century, far more men went to university than women. As a result, there were far more couples in which the man was better educated than the other way round. More recently, however, women have surpassed men in studiousness. Across the OECD on average 51% of women aged 25-34 had a university degree in 2019, compared with 39% of men. That makes the old pattern impossible to sustain. “Highly educated women who still want to marry up won’t find enough candidates,” says Albert Esteve, the director of the Centre for Demographic Studies in Barcelona. “So the question is, are they going to start marrying down?”

In other words, singlehood, which is already reshaping Western society, is likely to keep growing for some time to come, with all the consequences—good and bad—that it entails.

See Christine Emba in the New York Times (8 March 2026); and The Economist (8 November 2025), pp. 9, 16-18.