Daily Mail
March 12, 2014
Young married men have almost disappeared in England and Wales, figures revealed yesterday.
There are now fewer than 58,000 married men under 25, official figures show.
The proportion of men who marry young has collapsed to 1.7 per cent, marking a profound change in family life since the 1950s.
About 135,000 young women marry annually, figures from the 2011 census, just released by the Office for National Statistics, reveal.
Most of them have found men who have reached their late twenties or older.
In the 1950s, three-quarters of women and half of all men were married by their mid-twenties.
These days one in three men in their twenties is still with their parents and the average age at which a young person leaves their childhood home is 26.
However, cohabiting couples break up at least three times more quickly than married couples.
‘In the 70s and 80s it became more acceptable to move in together rather than marry,’ warned Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation.
‘The difficulty is that with more delay in marriage we are seeing a large increase in the rate of family break-up.