In October 2012 I wrote a column for The Dartmouth titled “Sex and Responsibility.” In it I argued that most students would do best to aim for a permanent state of monogamy, which for the purpose of economy I called “marriage.” While that definition of marriage is partially satisfactory, some of the studies mentioned below use the legal definition. Why should people want to be married? As summarized by sociologist Linda Waite and author Maggie Gallagher in “The Case for Marriage,” research shows that married people are happier, more likely to be financially successful, more likely to raise successful children and live longer.
If you don’t believe this, I suggest you take a survey of what fraction of Dartmouth students come from intact families with stable marriages. Then consider that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 65 percent of American children live with married parents as of 2010. According to policy analysts Dean Lillard and Jennifer Gerner, children who live with both parents are more than twice as likely to attend selective colleges.
Married people also have more sex than single or cohabitating couples and are more satisfied with it. Research by Dartmouth economics professor David Blanchflower with Andrew Oswald shows that people who have more sex are happier. It also shows that the happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners is one, independent of the amount of sex that a person has. As they state, their work “has conservative implications.”
I realize that most college students may not be thinking about marriage right now, and the increasing time gap between puberty and marriage is one reason for the development of the hookup culture. Nevertheless, a survey by Her Campus indicates that 85 percent of college-aged men and women want to get married by age 30. And 67.3 percent of college men said they would be content to stay together with a woman until marriage if they met the “right one” now. Furthermore, most college students eventually get married.
Couples that waited to have sex until marriage experienced the greatest relationship satisfaction and perceived stability, even when eliminating factors like education and religiosity, according to a study of married couples by sociologist Dean Busby and colleagues. The effect was moderate, but real. (Other factors such as personality are probably greater.) Crucially, communication had the highest correlation to satisfaction and stability, and couples that waited to have sex until marriage had the best communication.
One possible route to marriage is through hookups, leading perhaps next to a “friends with benefits” arrangement before evolving to a more serious romantic relationship. This path to marriage is becoming more common due to the prevalence of today’s hookup culture on campuses. But the very nature of hookup relationships makes this progression difficult.
Psychologists Elizabeth Paul and Kristen Hayes studied typical hookup experiences. While 30 percent of students said that hookups involved some “hanging out and talking,” 25 percent said that there was only small talk and 69 percent said that there was no communication about the sexual activity (ranging from kissing to sexual intercourse) that occurred. So often hookups involve little meaningful communication. The typical medium-to-long term prospect from hookups is nothing, which is not surprising considering that students usually define a hookup as involving no commitment.
Students’ aspirations about hookups often differ significantly from their experience and expectations. While anthropologists Justin Garcia and Chris Reiber found that the greatest motivating factor for hookups was physical pleasure (nearly 90 percent), 51 percent of students considered hookups a potential outlet to start a relationship. Yet only 6 percent of students expected that a relationship would result from the hookup.
A better foundation for marriage is friendship, leading to commitment. In the most successful marriages, the partners are constantly communicating, sharing life’s little things as well as life’s big things, and constantly expressing reception, empathy and understanding. This kind of communication is what we associate with a good friendship. When friendship, commitment, romance and sex come together, you have the elements for a beautiful, satisfying marriage.
Richard Denton is a physics and astronomy professor.
