How might an advocate of evolutionary theory explain the trend toward postponing marriage?

Answer 1

Sociocultural theory focuses on how societal values change from one generation to the next. An advocate of this theory would explain that getting married and starting a family has a different priority level to this generation than previous ones.

Answer 2

In Stone Age days and until the later Middle Ages, even the wealthiest and most comfortably living people would expect to die somewhere around age 45 -50 of natural causes - basically, of old age. This regardless of the considerable risk of dying long before that from any of many possible diseases, since effective cures for most were only discovered in the 20th century. People living in harsher conditions (the majority) would have an even lower life span expectancy.

Our bodies' development still reflect this ancient life span expectancy: despite today's average life span expectancy of well into the seventies, our bodies still reach their vitality peak in the late teens to early twenties and start the (luckily gradual) downward glide from age 35 on. Compare us to the elephant in the Zoo, well-cared for and knowing no hunger or disease like on the African plains. In the wild it will rarely live past 45, in the Zoo it can easily reach 75.

But with the 'old' life expectancy being what is was, it was essential for raising children to adulthood (read 16 to 18 years old) to start early with having them and marriage - such as it was at the time - should at the last take place around 17 to 20. And many of today's cultures with lower life expectancies like Russia and Brazil still consider a woman unmarried after 25 an old maid; like people in the US did until a couple of decades ago, a remnant of the cultures and life expectancies in their forefathers' countries of origin. Evolution - in this case the fact that man at least in better developed countries may expect to live to seventy-plus - dictates that when there has to be no need to rush into marriage simply because you might otherwise die or become too infirm to care for your young, postponing marriage has become a safe bet. However, a probably much more important reason than evolution for postponing marriage is cultural development: in Western societies, living together and even having children before getting married is no longer much of an issue. Even the Catholic Church hardly ever speaks out against it. In traditional societies however where a girl's virginity is still strongly linked to the honor of the family, marriages are usually concluded as early as hundreds of years before.