Posted on 09/16/2026 9:48:38 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently estimated that the gap between unmarried and married men under the age of 40 continues to widen—with 15 million more bachelors than husbands between the ages of 20 to 39 in 2025.
The gap has widened by 12.4 million since 2000, when the gap between married and unmarried stood at 2.6 million.
IFS also reports, according to a General Social Survey, 11 percent of young adults in the early 2000s said they were “not too happy.” That percentage is now at 26 percent. During the same period, the number of married men ages 20–39 dropped by 15 percent.
Leading the unhappiness charge are single men, who are either postponing or rejecting marriage, or not perceived as a suitable marriage partner by single women because of various societal changes.
This is a serious problem for American society.
In his book, “Men and Marriage,” (an expanded edition of his 1973 work “Sexual Suicide”) George Gilder wrote: “Men lust, but they don’t know what for; they wander, and lose track of the goal; they fight and compete, but they forget the prize; they spread seed but spurn the seasons of growth; they chase power and glory but miss the meaning of life.”
Brad Wilcox of IFS agrees with Gilder: “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy. It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited, and unhappy young men.”
A Wall Street Journal article from last year titled, “American Women are Giving Up on Marriage,” touches on several reasons why women are not getting married—whether it be trouble finding a suitable man or choosing a career over marriage.
Disillusioned with the current state of what they perceive to be suitable and available men, they say they are more content with singleness than their male counterparts. A commonly heard complaint is that in their search of a suitable man to marry, they are only finding a world of “man-children.”
So, why has this happened? Why are there so many unmarried young men and why are women having a hard time finding a suitable partner in what would seemingly be an abundant harvest?
First, many of these young men have no idea of what it takes to be a husband or father because they had no one to model that for them. This is just another symptom of the breakdown of the family, a culture of divorce, and a society that has economically awarded single parent families while placing financial burdens on traditional two-parent families.
Secondly, especially among working class men, the jobs that would have traditionally provided for a family have either not kept up with inflation, or in some cases, simply disappeared. In addition, our educational system is no longer providing the needed training for these men to enter the workplace and succeed. Meanwhile, the number of men attending college, the ticket to good paying and stable jobs, continues to decrease.
Finally, numerous voices in our culture have sent a message that women can succeed without having a husband—“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” as the saying goes. But when men are not marrying, there is a ripple effect that impacts all aspects of our society.
For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of children born outside of marriage has risen from 33.2 percent of all live births in 2000 to 39.5 percent in 2024. This means a much higher percentage of young people are growing up in single parent households. And single parent households are often more dependent upon government assistance, with boys who grow up without a father often ending up failing socially and economically.
Those numbers also indicate that we’re hurtling toward a demographic disaster. Married couples not only provide a nurturing environment for children but also are more likely to have children.
It is not that young men have given up on marriage. Pew Research reported in 2023 that 74 percent of teenage boys want to be married someday. The problem is that many have no internal road map or GPS to help them get there.
As a society, we need to equip these young men with the skills, personal discipline, and sense of purpose to make them “marriage material.” It is a time for us, as a society, to return to a time when men have purpose—to be faithful husbands, loving fathers, and good providers.
This is going to be a long process, and it will require a long-term societal investment in affirming healthy, traditional two-parent families with engaged fathers who model such discipline and purpose to their sons. Boys do not have a choice when it comes to the families they are born into, but adults can make the right choices to help them flourish and thrive.
Men, women, and our society will be much better off as a result.
Seven O’clock in the morning and I’m riding the overnight train
I’ve got ten tonnes of luggage but I left it behind when I came
I look at my watch, says September seventeen
We’re riding past some place where I’ve never been
And I’m waving through the window as we go
Somebody says “Well, hey, what are you waving at?”
Well what have I got to lose
Somebody might wave back
Happy Birthday Vendome!
Thnx bro!
Her Majesty says to tell you “Hello!”
Please tell She Who Must Be In Charge that I said “Hello back!”
I concede your point...given the non-conservative women of the day, I can’t see them as a prize worth fighting for.
All you have to do is look at the harpies that are available to marry and the answer becomes pretty obvious
American culture remains intact. The Welfare State is still in place.
Men know they can't fight a woman on equal terms.
Men know that if they challenge a woman on any issue, she will have the support of other women, and plenty of men (white knights), not to mention the courts, the churches, social media, academia, and much else.
Social media is spreading colored hair, tats, and female arrogance throughout the world.
Men under 6 feet tall are being naturally deselected. After a few thousand years all men will be over six feet and more men will procreate. Historically only 40% of males procreate where 80% of women procreate.
Humans can have one of two reproductive strategies. The first reproductive strategy is to produce large numbers of offspring with minimal investment into each offspring, i.e. large quantity, low quality. The second is to have fewer offspring with large investment into those that are produced, i.e quality over quantity.
In an unstable, unpredictable environment, the first strategy outperforms the second. That's the strategy that you see in the Third World and among the poor in the developed world. If they keep up with this strategy even when most of their kids survive thanks to affluent surroundings and/or a welfare state, they get the best of both worlds.
Can’t be made crazy if your weren’t stupid to begin with.
Right now the first strategy is superior.
And ultimately that is what happened to Ancient Rome.
While unemployed, basement-dwelling 30 something males certainly do exist, harping on this point ignores the other half of the equation: "where have all the good women gone"? No man win his right mind wants to put up with a shrill, entitled feminist harpy (often overweight, covered in disgusting tattoos and piercings, and with strange haircuts and dye jobs) who talks about how she's a "strong independent woman" when it suits her while feeling entitled to as much of your time and money as she likes and offering very little in return for the trouble.
Not me. I was pretty successful as was my wife. Then she really took off. She’s killing it and I just retired.
She earns twice my best year now and it’s growing like crazy.
A woman with a college degree in women's studies or Liberal Arts isn't necessarily going to earn more money than a man who learns a trade.
The reason fewer men are going to college these days is because a generic college degree no longer guarantees a stable, good-paying job in the way that it did decades ago, so many people are opting for vocational schools and apprenticeships instead as a path to success.
From what I have seen in friends and acquaintances:
- a woman can cheat on you
- falsely accuse you of abuse
- file for divorce
- get your house
- get half your retirement
- get half of your possessions
- get your kids
- get you alimony
And somehow this is deemed OK in our culture.
Amen. That is THE root cause.
Taking a foreign wife is risky. I’ve seen it fail quite a few times.
Either they are conscious & deliberate about marrying an American to get the chance to move here and become a citizen, or they actually fall in love (either with him genuinely, or at least how being American gives him alure), but either way, after she gets herself established, and he loses his luster, the game is up.
But let’s not forget, for all the criticism of women in this thread, there are a good percentage of men who are no great prize either, and a fraction of them are downright sleezebags and abusers.
Either they are conscious & deliberate about marrying an American to get the chance to move here and become a citizen, or they actually fall in love (either with him genuinely, or at least how being American gives him alure), but either way, after she gets herself established, and he loses his luster, the game is up.
“Eddie, I want to talk to yooooooooooo!”
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