Career is not the most important thing in life

Why prioritizing marriage matters

Here’s something I know for sure: No decision you make in life will have more impact on your happiness and well-being than whom you choose to marry. Where you go to school and which career you pursue are completely irrelevant in comparison. A career you can change, but you’re “stuck” with the spouse you choose. And the state of that marriage will be the defining factor when it comes to your physical and emotional health.

All of this, and yet we’ve demoted marriage to the bottom rung of the ladder. We treat this milestone as though it were an afterthought, as though it were something to be worried about later, once the “more important part” of our lives—education, career, finances—has been fleshed out and settled. Then, and only then, should one consider getting married.

How is it possible that the one decision that colors all the rest gets the least amount of attention?

It was Boomers who first ushered in the idea, particularly for women, that marriage should come second to career. Subsequent generations quickly followed suit and, eventually, a new ethos took hold. It goes something like this:

When you’re young, you need to take the time to figure out who you are—to “find yourself.” You need to finish all your schooling, no matter how many years it takes or how much debt you incur; you need to travel to get the wanderlust out of your system; and you need to get settled professionally and financially prior to getting married. If you don’t do life this way, you’ll make a poor choice of partner and wind up divorced.

It was a powerful message. After all, many children who were raised in broken homes or in unhappy households were convinced this was due to their parents having married too young or their mothers having lived “unfulfilled” lives. And lest they forget, the culture (i.e. media/Hollywood) is always there to drill this idea home.

But the reasons marriages fail are far more nuanced than how old a person is when he or she gets married or what roles he or she plays in said marriage. Telling people to delay or to avoid marriage is not the answer, yet that is what we did.

And it did not turn out to be the panacea for better marriages that Americans were led to believe.

The “career now, marry later” mindset

In fact, as a rule delayed marriage has not worked out well at all. Yes, there are some who get married in their thirties and do well. But on aggregate, no.

Here’s an excerpt you could find any day of the week in any number of publications about what life is like for today’s average thirty-something woman:

“My friends and I all seemed to be taking stock — considering having kids or feeling exhausted by new parenthood, searching for meaning in careers or seeking balance after working nonstop in our 20s...

In our 20s, living in New York City, my friends and I were focused on our careers. We thought we had plenty of time to marry and pop out a kid or two. In our 30s, though, something shifted.”

The author, Rachel Friedman, adds that her generation is “less happy than our 30-something predecessors.”

This conundrum modern women face is the inevitable result of being told that staying focused on career throughout their twenties is a better investment of their time and energy than getting married and having kids.

Here’s the return on that investment:

We have an entire generation that hasn’t grown up.

We have an entire generation that has no clue how to date, let alone how to choose a mate for marriage.

We have an entire generation that is deeply in debt.

All of these things transpired after American women shifted their priorities—away from marriage and family, onto the Almighty career.

A major oversight of this new plan was that there was no discussion about the ramifications for motherhood. No one wants to talk about women’s waning fertility; the topic is too loaded. But to not do so is to have helped cause the fertility crisis we now face.

Another problem that is rarely acknowledged is that women who were taught to “worry about marriage later” find themselves up against the clock when they all-of-the-sudden want a child and often marry whomever they happen to be dating or living with at the time.

This is a terrible time to make such a choice since women are then feeling pressure when they shouldn’t be. That too is a result of the belief that marriage should be a capstone achievement rather than a cornerstone of young adult life.

The implication is that marriage holds us back. In reality, it propels people forward. Navigating life’s trials and tribulations alongside someone we love not only makes life more meaningful; it makes it easier to get ahead. It is well-documented that married couples earn substantially more than single folks do.

Does later marriage mean a better marriage?

Implicit in the narrative about postponing marriage is the idea that when you’re older, you’ll choose better. That may be true for some, but there is no real evidence for this claim.

Quite the contrary, actually. What often winds up happening is that women spend years preparing for a life most of them will never even have.

What do I mean? Well, think about it. All anyone ever talks to young women about is education and career. There is no discussion about how to map out a life that’s unique to them as women: one that can accommodate marriage and motherhood. So women prepare for their futures in the same way men prepare for theirs: as though they will be lifelong earners and will never step out of the workforce.

The result is that, while women are spending upwards of a decade going to school and/or working, the pool of marriageable men has shrunk. Considerably.

No one thinks much about this phenomenon since we’re supposed to be “enlightened” and therefore shouldn’t matter. But for all the progress women have made, one thing hasn’t: Most women, once they’re in their thirties, want to work less—not more. Yet they enter the nesting phase without a suitable husband in sight.

And the women who do get married often marry men who earn less than they do, which has major ramifications not only for their relationship but for their finances. Almost all of my clients are wives and mothers who out earn their husbands and who desperately want to stay home. Problem is, they created lives as though this wasn’t going to happen.

As I sit here typing, America is drowning in a sea of wives and mothers who are trying to be both breadwinner and nester, and it’s killing them. For many of these women, their marriages are hanging by a thread.

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It isn’t just the culture that promotes the idea that marrying later is better. Parents do, too. But is it actually true that later marriage means a better marriage?

In a word, no. “With this study, I found that age at first marriage had weak to no influence on marital quality,” writes BYU scholar Anne Marie Wright Jones.

What apparently does have an influence on marital quality is one’s relationship with his or her parents:

“Parental warmth with mothers and fathers,” write the authors of “Back Off! Helicopter Parenting and a Retreat From Marriage Among Emerging Adults,” “is an important correlate of emerging adults’ marital attitudes.”

What parents pass on to their kids about marriage matters, too:

Were you raised to be suspect of men and marriage?

Were you raised to de-prioritize motherhood?

Were you raised to believe women aren't worth the trouble?

Were you raised to believe marriage is a crapshoot?

Were you raised to put career under all circumstances?

Were you raised without God or religion?

Were you raised to make as much money as you can, no matter the cost to your personal life?

Were you raised in a broken home?

If you answered no to these questions, you were likely raised by parents who bucked the status quo and who touted marriage as a good thing, the most important thing, an “it’s crucial to get this right” kind of thing. Naturally this has an impact on how one views the role of marriage in one’s life.

Of course luck plays a role in how and when each of us finds the person we ultimately marry. I would not have met my husband if we had not both shown up at that bar that night. My cousin would not have met her husband at a funeral if they hadn’t both known the same person whose son had died. And my daughter would not have met her fiancé if they hadn’t both chosen the college they did.

But it isn’t enough to be presented with a potentially good match for marriage; you have to be open to the possibility, too. If you’ve been groomed your entire life to “worry about marriage later” and to stay focused on career, you’ll miss what’s right in front of you.

There’s another way parents can be of help: by teaching their kids good relationship skills.

“Instead of focusing on age,” adds Wright Jones, “parents can encourage their children to develop good communication and other relationship skills. And when children in their early 20s fall in love and want to build a life together with someone, parents can be supportive of a young adult’s choice to marry rather than withholding support or encouraging them to delay tying the knot.”

As it happens, my husband and I are in this exact boat now. We have a daughter, 25, who’s getting married this summer. And even more unusual for the era we’re in is that our son, who was born old and has always beat to his own drum, will marry his high school girlfriend at the age of 23.

My husband and I support both of them 100%. (We also love our soon-to-be son- and daughter-in-law and don’t see any red flags. Both of our children are very fortunate.)

Still, it’s been interesting to share this news with others. We typically get one of two reactions: a hearty “Congratulations!” from those who are countercultural thinkers (or who married young themselves), or a deer-in-the-headlights look from those who erroneously believe that marrying young is a bad idea—either because they typically repeat cultural scripts or because, perhaps, they’re conflicted about their own life choices.

Many of these same parents, if they were in our boat, would do exactly what Wright Jones said: withhold support, or encourage their kids to delay tying the knot. But ask these parents why they believe as they do, and they will stumble to offer a rock-solid reason.

A new view of marriage

My son’s impending marriage reminds me of the last episode of the popular Netflix series, Gilmore Girls. When Logan, Rory’s college boyfriend—who was an excellent match for her—proposed after college graduation, Rory turned him down exclusively so she could pursue her career unencumbered by someone else’s plans.

Logan had secured a great job, and Rory hadn’t yet. If she married him, she’d have to move to the state where his job was, which she felt limited her options. Ironically, it wouldn’t have limited her options at all. Logan’s new job was in San Francisco, and Rory wanted to be a reporter. All she needed for that career is a big city.

Nevertheless, the series put the spotlight on the fact that Rory had to choose between love and career—and, naturally, career won. That’s the message Hollywood wants to sell because it makes for better TV.

But that doesn’t make it the right choice, or the smart choice. It is simply A choice. It is a choice that rests on the mindset that marriage holds people back.

As it turns out, it’s the “career now, marry later” mindset that sets many folks up to fail—especially women. After all, it is women who have a foreshortened time frame in which to get their lives in order since they are the sex that gets pregnant and will soon enter a nesting phase. Remember Friedman’s comment? “In our 30s, something shifted.”

She also noted, rightfully so, that women typically seek balance “after working nonstop throughout their twenties.” That is not a statement most men would make. When a man becomes a father, his desire to earn doesn’t tamper down. It ramps up.

This is not the case for most women. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at this video that recently went viral and wound up on Good Morning America.

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To be clear, I am not saying that everyone should marry young in order to have a successful life or marriage. What I am saying is that there’s no good reason to dissuade young couples who are in an otherwise healthy relationship from getting married.

If you were to ask more seasoned married couples what the secret is to a long marriage, many will tell you it isn’t the circumstances of their marriage but the attitude and response to those circumstances that made all the difference. The magic is in your mindset.

People also mature at different rates based on their life experiences. Both of our children, for example, were painfully aware that their mother, father, and maternal grandmother all married later in life. As a result, we have smaller families.

Our kids want something different for themselves: They want more children than my husband and I had, and they want the two of us to be around, physically and emotionally, for much longer than their grandparents were.

Having positive role models for marriage is a huge help, too. This does not mean parents need to have a perfect, or even a particularly great, marriage. But modeling a stable relationship that shows a commitment to marriage has an enormous impact on children.

Do my husband and I know that our son and daughter will be married forever and will have great marriages? No, that’s impossible to predict. But we do know that telling them to wait to get married for no good reason will not improve their chances of marital success later on.

We also know that, despite our own flawed marriage, our kids have learned many relationship skills because we’ve been communicating openly with them about marriage for years. What they do with that information is up to them.

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It is time for a reckoning. Americans have failed young people spectacularly by telling them career is the most important thing in life and that de-prioritizing marriage and family is the smart way, or the only way, to map out a life.

Americans have also failed by encouraging young people to live together instead of getting married “to see if it is right.” That doesn’t work. If you haven‘t already made up your mind about someone, living with him or her will not cinch the deal. If anything, it will cause a couple to “slide” into marriage, rather than make a well-thought out decision.

Finally, telling young people to delay marriage indefinitely sends a message that money and career should take precedence over love and family. But thinking about one’s most important relationship as a lower priority can show up in countless ways throughout marriage.

The source of the problem is that women stopped prioritizing marriage. And that’s the very thing that turns boys into men.

I personally think a change is underway among younger Americans. I think they’re tired of the mess that dating has become. I think they’re sick of social media and dating apps. I think they haven’t seen the results they were told they would see of the messages they received about love and work.

To wit: The modern generation is now drowning in debt, and many cannot for the life of them find someone suitable to marry. There may be more than one reason for this sad state of affairs; but at the heart of it lies an attitude, a mindset, a belief that marriage is a crapshoot.

I receive scores of emails and online comments from women who want a different life than the one they were told they should want and who feel trapped in a culture that’s deeply resistant to their desires.

David Brooks put it best in “Five Lies Our Culture Tells”: We’ve created a culture based on lies, and one of those lies is that career success “is fulfilling.”

“This is the lie we foist on the young. In their tender years we put the most privileged of them inside a college admissions process that puts achievement and status anxiety at the center of their lives. That begins advertising’s lifelong mantra — if you make it, life will be good…

Everybody who has actually tasted success can tell you that’s not true. I remember when the editor of my first book called to tell me it had made the best-seller list. It felt like … nothing. It was external to me.

The truth is, success spares you from the shame you might experience if you feel yourself a failure, but career success alone does not provide positive peace or fulfillment. If you build your life around it, your ambitions will always race out in front of what you’ve achieved, leaving you anxious and dissatisfied.”

There is irony with the predicament women are in today. They complain all day long that there are fewer marriageable men, and it’s true: There are fewer men who’ve matured enough to become husbands and fathers.

But why is that? There’s a long list for why boys are failing to grow up, but part of the problem is that women stopped prioritizing marriage—and marriage is the very thing that turns boys into men.

Having purpose changes a man. When a man feels responsible for the happiness and well-being of his family, he tends to step up. At the very least, he knows it will make him look bad if he doesn’t. But most men want to do this, as providing and protecting are in their DNA.

Which means that, at the end of the day, it is women who have the power to move the needle in a better direction. If they want to find more marriageable men, women need to prioritize marriage when they’re young.

They don’t have to get married young (although that’s okay, too!); but they do need to shift their mindset to understand that whom they marry will affect, for better or for worse, the entire trajectory of their lives.

If that isn’t enough reason, I don’t know what is.