Couples dodging church aisle when getting married

Eight out of 10 Australians who married last year did so before­ a civil celebrant, data reveals.

‘It just seemed right’ ... Casey Johnston, 21, and Perrin Watson, 22, got married last month after meeting at school. Picture: Aaron Francis

Eight out of 10 Australians who got married last year tied the knot before­ a civil celebrant, new data reveals.

The nation’s marriage rate is significantly down in less than a generation, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows, driven, experts­ say, by twenty-somethings struggling to reach the traditional markers of adulthood.

The ABS data reveals that, in 1998, 26.2 per 1000 men aged 20-24 exchanged wedding vows, but by 2018 this plummeted to just 11 per 1000. For women aged 20-24, the marriage rate fell from 44 per 1000 in 1998 to 18.5 last year. Marriage rates are also falling for those aged 25-29, more so for men than women.

With other age ranges steady, these age groups are responsible for the overall marriage rate in Australia falling from 5.9 per 1000 in 1998 to 4.8 per 1000 last year.

Marriages are also increasingly secular, ABS data found. While more than half of all marriages (50.5 per cent) were conducted by a minister of religion in 1998, civil celebrants conducted eight in every 10 weddings last year.

 

University of Melbourne sociol­ogy professor Lyn Craig said it was little wonder fewer Australians in their 20s were getting married­, given the obstacles they faced in forming a new household.

“They are coming of age in a time when the things they need to transition to adulthood, in particular work, income and housing, are becoming a lot more uncertain than they were 20 years ago, so many young people are making this transition later, or not at all,” Professor Craig said.

Australian Institute of Family Studies director Anne Hollonds said the decline in marriage rates for young people wasn’t surprising when almost half the men aged 20-24 were still living at home, and cohabiting without being married was increasingly the norm.

“They’re staying in education longer, they have less employment security and less income security, and housing is so much more expensi­ve than 20 years ago,” Ms Hollonds said.

“There has been a big cultural shift in attitude around how young people live. I’m from a generation that left home at 21 … and never went back, and that’s when you becam­e an adult. Now it’s a more gradual transition to adult life.”

 

Bucking the trend, Melbourne couple Casey Johnston, 21, and Perrin Watson, 22, were married a month ago. The couple met at school in Western Australia aged 15 and 16, and moved east to start a new life together 18 months ago. The administrative assistant and warehouse assistant lived together for three years before marrying.

“We talked a lot about the ­future, and our plans aligned, and getting married was what we both wanted,” Ms Johnston said. “It just seemed right.”

Their families and friends were supportive of the marriage, despite their young age. “They understood this was much more than just a boyfriend and girlfriend thing,” Ms Johnston said.

The shift away from church weddings to civil ceremonies was symbolic of a general shift in cultura­l norms, Ms Hollonds said: “Census data tells us religion is not as important as previously, and we are tending to disconnect relationship formation from religion.”

The ABS said 2018 was the first full year of data for same-sex marriag­es, with 6538 recorded. “In 2018, same-sex marriages represented 5.5 per cent of the total number of marriages,” said James Eynstone-Hinkins, director of the ABS Health and Vital Statistics.