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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 10, 1986
The proportion of never-married men and women in their late 20s
and early 30s more than doubled between 1970 and 1985, census
figures show.
There are 4.2 million such women now and 6.1
million men. And because nearly all first marriages occur by
age 35, some demographers believe that two to three times as
many adults will stay single as did so just a generation ago.
n
it's a major trend that most people don't understand is in the
oITing-;-
n
says GeorgelJrasnick, a demograplier at the tfarvard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Joint Center for
Housing Studies.
"Marriage has ceased to be the economic
institution that it once was."
Staying single longer, perhaps for good, is already reshaping
the way Americans live and spend their money.
Unmarried
persons, for instance, typically spend 50 percent of their food
dollars dining out, compared with 37 percent for two-person
households•••• Especially startling is the fact that the buying
habits and social attitudes of still-single adults increasingly
mimic those of married couples. Rather than postpone purchases
until a marriage that may never happen, many singles are
fashioning satisfying, independent ways of life.
The unmarried state no longer represents "a period of marking
time or making do. --it's a period of acquisition,�says Ann
�rman, a senior vice president witnYankelovich, Clancy and
Shulman, a New York market-research firm.
"You can see the
change in the numbers of single people buying single-family
homes, china, silver and all the other goodies•••• They are
earning good money and want good things."
Today's never�married individuals often prefer the housing
space and privacy that they remember from growing up in
suburbia. Single-family houses accounted for nearly two-thirds
of the homes purchased by single persons in 1984, according to
a nationwide survey by the National Association of Realtors.
"The 700-square-foot condominium isn't going to do it for
them," says Kenneth Rosen, the director of Salomon Brothers
Inc.'s real-estate research group••••
Several major department-store chains recently have switched
their bridal registries to ngift
n
registries, largely to
attract unmarried customers•••who wish to furnish their
households better and let relatives and friends know their gift
preferences. A Bloomingdale's store in Rockville, MD, canceled
its traditional spring bridal fair this year.
Instead, one
sunny Saturday afternoon last month, 350 shoppers attended a
n
Not for Brides Only" event at which manufacturers promoted
everything from silver to fine crystal, tablecloths and
luggage••••
In their search for permanence, more highly educated career
women are choosing motherhood witliout marriage--and winning
sex-bias"c::ases when companies fire them for the ouf=of-wed!ock
births. There Is"""'even a national advocacy group, begun in 1981