The millennium cohort grew up during the period of America’s historic surge in divorce. They later had fewer marriages, got married later on and helped drive divorce rates downward. It has been suggested that seeing marriages fall apart may have influenced the way some people dealt with commitment, but economic factors and shifting social norms also play a role in the story.
Millennials came into the world at a remarkable point in the history of American families. The first of their generation were born about 1981, the year when the United States registered a record high of about 1.213 million divorces. The national divorce rate had already hit a record 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people by 1979, following a sharp increase during the 1960s and 1970s. For a great many children who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, divorce was no longer an uncommon family occurrence; it had become a regular feature of American childhood. CDC Stacks
Millennials went on to describe their childhood in a way that differed from that of older generations. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 62% of Millennials stated that their parents were married when they were growing up, as compared with 71% of the Gen X group, 85% of the Baby Boomers and 87% of the Silent Generation. About 24% of Millennials said their parents had been divorced or separated, and an additional 11% said their parents had never married.
Then something interesting happened. The millennial generation reached adulthood and became much less inclined to get married quickly. In its comparison of the different generations at the same ages, in 2019 only 44% of Millennials aged between 23 and 38 were married, as against 53% of the Gen X group, 61% of the Baby Boomers and 81% of the Silent Generation when they were at the same stage of life. Furthermore, Millennials married later and were more likely than Gen X had been to live with an unmarried romantic partner. Pew Research Center
Divorce rates among younger Americans started to decrease at the same time. This combination does raise an interesting question as to whether a generation which saw marriage fall apart became more unwilling to enter into marriage but at the same time more selective when it eventually did.
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There is evidence to show that when parents get divorced it can influence the way in which children think about marriage well after their childhood is over.
A study involving 265 engaged couples showed that women whose parents had divorced tended to have a lower level of commitment to their upcoming marriages and were less confident that these marriages would succeed. Crucially, these differences stayed after the researchers had taken into account the conflict that the couples remembered between their parents and the quality of the relationship between the engaged couple themselves. The effect was not observed in the same manner among men, which is an important limitation, but the results do support the general notion that seeing divorce can affect expectations regarding whether marriage is permanent. PubMed Central
Other research has also identified similar patterns. A study from Norway covering more than 37,000 people showed that adult children of divorced parents tended to delay marriage or decide not to marry at all; among those who did get married, divorce was more frequent than among adults whose parents had stayed married. The study also revealed that children from divorced families were more likely to marry other children of divorced parents, and these marriages had a particularly high risk of dissolving. PubMed
Longitudinal research carried out in the United States in earlier times also showed an intergenerational effect. Paul Amato from Pennsylvania State University and Danelle DeBoer discovered that if parents divorced, the odds that their adult children would later experience the breakdown of their own marriages would approximately double. Their analysis indicated that commitment to the concept of lifelong marriage was one way in which instability could be passed on from one generation to the next. Wiley Online Library
It by no means follows that all children who go through a divorce come to fear marriage, and it doesn’t mean that a parent’s divorce will always lead to a subsequent divorce. The research deals with the probabilities within populations, not with the fates of individual families. It does provide a psychological reason for part of the Millennial tendency. Since marriage appeared unstable when they were children, it might have seemed sensible to put off making that commitment.
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Millennials have gone beyond putting off marriage; the marriages that did take place became more selective as well.
The sociologist Philip Cohen from the University of Maryland looked at data from the American Community Survey and discovered that the refined divorce rate in the United States decreased by 21 per cent from 2008 to 2017. This drop was driven by younger women. Cohen concluded that more recent marriages had acquired characteristics linked to greater stability, such as marrying at older ages and having higher levels of educational attainment. PubMed Central
Cohen stated that modern marriages among younger Americans are becoming “more selective, and more stable.” He claimed that people were now putting off marriage until their economic and romantic situations had become more settled. Maryland Today
This trend is also evident when looking at data covering a wider age range. According to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, the U.S. refined divorce rate fell from 19 divorces per 1,000 currently married people in 1990 to 13.7 by 2023; divorces declined among people aged 15 to 44 but rose among those aged 45 and over.
It is here that the story of the Millennials turns against expectation. The generation that grew up with widespread divorce did not just end up being even more likely to divorce; many Millennials instead became less likely to get married at all, married later when they did, and entered into marriages during a period when divorce among young adults was decreasing.
Marriage did not disappear. It seems that the threshold for entering it has shifted.
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There is, on the other hand, a serious problem with holding parents’ divorce responsible for this change or giving them credit for it.
Millennials also experienced a totally different kind of economic adulthood than that of their parents since they married later on as a result of staying in education longer, began their careers later, went through the Great Recession during their early working years and in increasing numbers had to deal with expensive housing and student debt. According to Pew Research Center, there was a strong link between marriage and education among Millennials: in 2019 half of those who had at least a bachelor’s degree were married, as compared with 38% of those who had only a high school education.
What researchers refer to as a selection effect results from that. Marriage will therefore be able to become more stable simply because there are fewer people getting married and those who do marry tend to have higher levels of education, be established in their careers, enjoy greater financial stability and marry at an older age; it is not therefore proof that the Millennials have become inherently better spouses for each other that divorce rates are falling.
There is also evidence that the effects of divorce on children go well beyond their attitudes towards love. A working paper from the Census Bureau for 2025, which looked at linked records for over 5 million children, found that nearly one third of them had experienced parental divorce before reaching adulthood. After the divorce, these children saw a decrease in household income, their parents lived farther apart, and there were more moves along with relocations to neighborhoods that offered fewer economic opportunities. U.S. Census Bureau
For Millennials, a marriage coming to an end could therefore have given them more than one lesson; while divorce might involve emotional turmoil it could also result in a different home, less money, a change of schools, and parents having to rebuild their lives on their own. It is possible that this has helped to account for the fact that some members of the Millennial generation regarded marriage as something which should take place only after all other aspects had seemed secure.
It can’t establish a straightforward sequence in which Boomer divorce directly led to a delay in Millennial marriage and then resulted in lower Millennial divorce rates. Too many economic, cultural and demographic factors were changing at the same time. Yet the pattern across generations is hard to overlook.
Millennials were unusually frequently exposed to family disruption. Compared with earlier generations they were less likely to marry at the same age and tended to put off marriage until later adulthood. When they came into the marriage group, divorce rates among younger Americans decreased.
It might be that the Millennials didn’t decide not to get married because so many marriages had failed. Maybe they changed their minds about the idea that marriage was something you joined in and then worked out afterwards.
Their parents’ generation helped make divorce ordinary. Millennials may have responded by making marriage rarer, later and considerably more selective. articlehumanizetemplate