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Baby boomers think more like their kids than their parents on love and marriage, a Gallup Poll reports today.
Thirty-five percent of those ages 40-64 believe marriage is "very important" if a couple have a child together; 58% of adults 65 and older say so. Of those ages 18-39, 30% believe it is "very important." Overall, 37% of respondents believe a child is a "very important" reason to marry.
"It's shocking in what it represents: that we're going to have more and more children growing up without the benefits of a two-parent family," says Howard Markman, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver.
The analysis was based on telephone interviews May 8-11 with a randomly selected national sample of 1,002 adults ages 18 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
There was much greater agreement on a question about whether it is "very important" to marry if the couple plan to spend their lives together. Overall, 65% agreed.
For ages 40-64, the response was similar: 66%. Of those ages 18-39, 57% agreed it is "very important" to marry if the couple are committed to each other, compared with 80% of those 65 and older.
"We're still quite a marrying society," says David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. But marriage is weakening as an important institution in the USA, he says.
Seattle-based researcher John Gottman says European responses would be quite different. "People would say if you're living together and planning on spending your life together, there's no need to get married, but if you're going to have a baby, get married," he says.
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