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.
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Government school indoctrination is at its most successful among females.
They come out of government schools absolutely crazy. Crazy doesn’t make for good wives.
No, the problem isn’t the females. It’s the government.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Abolish the Department of Education to restore marriages in the United States.
Might be some correlation with the fact that 60% of college graduates are now women, and women want to marry “up.”
To learn why men aren’t marrying, research the Clancy witch trials... (shudder)
Alimony and palimony were the gifts that lawyers brought us to this point.
>> ... touches on several reasons why women are not getting married—whether it be trouble finding a suitable man or choosing a career over marriage.
Or weighing 300 pounds, having blue hair and nose piercings, and expecting some poor dude to put up with their progressive crap...???
“Might be some correlation with the fact that 60% of college graduates are now women, and women want to marry “up.”
Excellent point. And if they follow that education to a more successful business career with access to occassional men on their terms it slows the natural selection process of give and take.
You might also add that men are afraid of successful women. They have been programmed to stand down now rather than take the gamble at a more permanent relationship now. And our lifestyle is also filled with co-habitation rather than a marriage contract.
wy69
Evolution will work its magic here. Only the ones that have children stay in the game. The single mom path is a destructive one but the married path works out better. Evolution will weed out the losers like it always has .
Exactly.
No-fault divorce also. The non-breadwinning spouse can sleep with the entire town and still walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars and primary custody of the kids.
Why would any man sign up for that?
Chicks have, on average, have porked up, tatted up, and woke up?
Job satisfaction is based on what is achieved. Women, by their very nature , get to create a person and make them into something good. Men , by their nature need to support that because they can't match that . The two roles have been proven over and over again into a tradition but our current culture has become rotten and unnatural.
No, men don’t want to marry woke crazy baby killers
I went to a small high school in a small city. My grad class was 75 people.
In my immediate peer group from high school on, we have some who married young and stayed together (2 couples), several who married and divorced several times (44 individuals), and three that never married or carried out a committed relationship of any sort.
The rest of us had either long term “common law” marriages, or didn’t stay in a relationship for more than a few years.
Our FIFTY year reunion is coming up in ‘29.
This is not new, it’s just noticed more, since more and more men are giving up on the feminazized women of today.
American women are self-centered, spoiled, entitled, rotten, stupid, leftist, wicked baby killers. I am very glad they are not marrying and spreading their evil bullshit into the next generation.
This writer totally neglects another needed change. There needs to be a huge change in the way women behave.
A man wants to marry a decent woman who will be a good mother. There are far too many females who sleep around and act trashy in general. That “girl power” garbage they were fed is very destructive.
Another “it’s all men’s fault” default position essay.
No, women have agency.
Government (and private industry, including social media) caters to women's worst impulses.
A Christian patriarchy restrained women (and men) from acting on their worst impulses.
The current culture, of which government is only a part (and not necessarily the biggest part), does the opposite.
“This is a serious problem for American society.”
No. This IS American society.” American society didn’t want married couples, and that’s what they got. Who want to defend and protect a society that is murdering its children, actively committing cultural and racial suicide, and importing millions and millions of third world barbarians to turn it in to an Islamic caliphate? Sorry. But I don’t feel the least bit bad not signing up to take care of some woman with the bad deal marriage is now, be an ATM for the government, and be a wage slave for a job I have to keep to keep paying the bills for said society?
Not in the way you might think.
Evolution might favor more low IQ, feral children from single moms, because the current environment encourages their reproduction. Whereas evolution might disfavor children from high IQ stable homes.
Evolution does not always favor the smartest, strongest, or prettiest. Only those best able to adapt to the current environment.
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