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.
One last thought. In today’s American society, people are not taught that success is a building process. For family, it starts with a man and woman dedicated to being husband and wife, and to having children they raise together. It is not a momentary commitment, and it takes work. I’ve been married 37 years. 4 children. It’s not perfect, but I remain dedicated to making it the best it can be.
We don’t have to do anything that we don’t want to do.
Of course not, the scary part is that you don’t want to be sexual with females, just with yourselves or other males.
Definitely not other males. I’m not interested in getting the cauldron of diseases that goes with that.
I’m comfortable to be with my self. I don’t need the company.
Crazy doesn’t make for good wives.
Or coworkers, neighbors, voters...
As a society we need to fix this problem of so many young males being repulsed by and fearful of sex with females, and preferring the security blanket of their imaginary sex life with photos and videos of females, while locked away from actual human contact.
No, as usual you are making something up, what are you talking about?
It is still a guarantee if you're woke and you know how to play the game.
There are no guarantees and never were.
Individuality appears to be dead and we see it with these posts about girls, as the posters use statistics or some article to explain why they can’t personally interact with females.
What does a poll have to do with an individual turning off the porn and walking outdoors to talk to a real, live female?
I don’t have a flippant attitude about divorce obviously, what I do have is a concern about guys here at FR being afraid of females and despising them before they even meet them.
You guys need to rediscover individualism and a desire for females.
Waiting on the sexbots......
I think we all are, but what if they are all part of a collective female AI mind?
Well, they will come with a mute button.
It isnt the young men you have to fix. It is thevwomen and system.you have to fix.
It is all of it, but males acting like neurotic weirdos with no desire for females is a madness that we are seeing right here on FR.
For most it is probably fear of rejection from trying to meet and interact with an attractive female which seems to be magnifying with our game playing soy boy generation, but let’s face it, latent homosexuality accounts for some of this, some of these males who despise women so much will eventually get around to finding out why they despise females and will accept what they are fighting to hide from themselves.
While some males might be as you state, it is not most males. Most males are responding to the incentives provided them and arent willing to be a male black widow spider just to have a family.
If you dont change the system, there is no purpose in being married for a male. Zero purpose.
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