Heterosexual Marriage Trends in the West

Over the last decades, marriage rates decreased all over Europe and North America. At the same time, unmarried cohabitation and divorce rose steeply. Van de Kaa and Lesthaeghe linked these evolutions to birth control, women’s labor participation and postmodern individualism in what they called the Second Demographic Revolution. Recently, changes came to an end in most countries. Marriage, cohabitation and divorce practices stabilized again at comparable levels. Most individuals now know unmarried cohabitation at least once in their life and about half of each generation will end up marrying. This new stable marriage regime seems to be based on shared labor and domestic participation.