(Edited to clean up mistakes.)

Much has been made in the last couple of days about a statistic that says households headed by married couples are now in the minority.  This no doubt garnered a lot of press due to a Leftist desire to promote the state over the family, and the Left figures that if married couples no longer form the majority of households, politicians and businesses can stop focusing on what married couples want.  They can now cater to people who want the state to be big brother or big sister.

Never mind the fact that by the same statistics, married couples still make up the largest percentage of households by far, because the rest of the pie is made up of a combination of:
1. Couples shacking up
2. Widowed people
3. Platonic roommates (divorced or never having been married)
4. Single parents living without a honey
5. Same-sex couples.

Also, how many people in the "unmarried" households either were married and would still be if they could control the matter, or are planning (or at least hoping) to get married?  Those are also people likely to support marriage-friendly policies.  Plus, a married couple represents two potential votes and more spending power in general than a single person.

Still, the statistics do show that households headed by married couples no longer outnumber all of those outer arrangements combined.

And is that any surprise?

For one thing, people are living longer in general, and that may mean widowed spouses are living longer as widows or widowers.  At the other end, people are waiting longer to get married.  Have you seen the percentages on college enrollment?  Lots of women, and many of them are staying single until after finishing school and some are waiting even longer until they've worked for a while in a career.  One of the positive effects of genuine feminism is that the days of women having to rely on their fathers, brothers, and then husbands for financial survival are long gone, so they have one less factor creating a need to get married young.

But yes, there are the other cultural reasons, too.  Divorce is more accepted.  We have separated marriage from commitment.

We have also...
Separated sex from childbearing.
Separated sex from marriage.
Separated living together from marriage.
Separated childrearing from marriage.

And now, many are actively trying to separate marriage from society (while still demanding societal sanction), making it strictly a personal matter between any two people based on criteria that can't be verified.  This counterfeiting of marriage devalues marriage while removing one of the core defining features - uniting both sexes.

And since we long ago separated sex from marriage, people can have sex without being married and without social disapproval.  They can live together...even raise kids together.  They can do all of this without being looked down upon, without even being admonished by their supposedly Christian church.  They can appear to "have it all" without having to go through a ridiculously expensive and stressful ceremony, which can also foment strife considering the ceremony is likely to draw some people who have divorced each other, there to sit near their sworn enemy as someone else they are related to promises lifelong commitment... just like they did at one time.

Of course, most women want to have that ceremony and the vast majority of women "marry up" financially and thus have a measurable incentive to get married.  Most people can understand it to be true when pro-family groups point out that women and children are better off in married households.

However, a growing number of men (and women with sons or brothers) doubt it when the pro-family groups say that men are also better off getting married.  They doubt it because most women DO marry up, and the laws of most states make that a losing partnership for the man if there is a divorce... and there is a very high chance for divorce. The divorce and child support laws in most states are such that a wife can sit at home, cheat on the man under his nose, spend up the credit cards, and give birth to his best friend's child, then divorce the man, take half of everything, even live off of his alimony payments for the rest of her life, AND get child support from him to pay for a child that isn't biologically his.  Here in California, a woman who was married to a man for ten years can live off his alimony for the rest of her life... as long as she doesn't remarry.  That is surely another factor is lowering the percentage of married households.

The fringe feminists once proclaimed that marriage is slavery (though now the lesbian ones are clamoring to make sure they can be in "slavery" to other women), and that all sex (male/female, of course) is rape.  Well, many american women bought into the first part, and even if they get married, they keep it from being "slavery" by telling their husbands "You have two hands, you cook it (or clean it, or fold it, or whatever) yourself!"  Men see their kids being raised in daycare instead of by their wives so that she can be a "liberated" woman.  (I know... some men pressure their wives to work... not talking about them here.)

And since women bought into the mantra that traditional marriage is slavery, but not that all sex is rape, they have "liberated" themselves by sleeping around.  More and more men notice this and say, "Good!  I don't want to get married either!"  As long as they have easy access to casual sex, these men do not see the benefits of getting married to women who do not cook, do not clean, will not raise their kids, become uninterested in sex with them, and will wipe them out financially if they opt to leave.

I'm sure there are also women who refrain from marrying for fear of going through a divorce.

And we wonder why the percentages have changed?

(By the way... I'm happily married... to a woman who cooks, cleans, and so very much wants to raise our kids once we have them.)