Nov. 17--We just can't quit you, marriage.
Four out of 10 new marriages in the United States include at least one partner who has been married before, and two in 10 are between partners who've both been previously married, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data.
The number of remarried adults has been rising steadily since the '60s, according to the study, with close to 42 million of us claiming more than one marriage under our belts. (I'm on my second.) In 1980, 22 million adults were married more than once, up from 14 million in 1960.
"This increase has been fueled by several demographic trends, beginning with the rise in divorce, which has made more Americans available for remarriage," the study states. "It has also been fueled by the overall aging of the population, which not only increases the number of widows and widowers available to remarry, but means people quite simply have more years in which to make, dissolve and remake unions."
It's worth noting, though, that the rise in remarriages is taking place in a less-than-hospitable climate for marriage overall. The number of American adults who have been married even once has fallen to 70 percent, down from 85 percent in 1960, according to the study.
As we've reported here, more Americans than ever before are unmarried and a growing percentage say they're happy to stay single for the long haul. The divorce rate, meanwhile, continues to hover around 50 percent for first marriages and climbs to 67 percent for second marriages.
So what inspires 42 million of us to jump back in -- sometimes more than once -- to an institution that didn't work the first time around?
It could be that marriage makes you healthier and helps you live longer. It could be that we believe so intrinsically in second acts. (Even F. Scott Fitzgerald didn't really mean his famous, "no second acts" line, say scholars.) It could be that we're hopeless optimists.
It's impossible to say for sure, of course. Every couple marries for individual, intimate reasons. For me, I found a friend and partner who makes me laugh, keeps me talking and inspires me with his kindness. I wanted to go through life side-by-side. I wanted to practice the unconditional love my kids taught me on a grown-up who was happy to receive and return it. It was the simplest decision of my life.
Hopefully millions of others have similar reasons, regardless of how many times they've walked down the aisle.
hstevens@tribpub.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
