Half of all teenagers will never marry
TEENAGERS are falling out of love with marriage, with figures indicating only half of them will ever walk down the aisle.
Research by the Marriage Foundation think-tank predicts just 57 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys now aged 13-18 will become a wife or a husband later in life.
The Office of National Statistics figures reveal a steep decline from previous generations. Among people now in their sixties, 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men opted for marriage.
The study also reveals that current marriage rates among the under-25s have plunged virtually to zero, with just 8 per cent of women and 4 per cent of men in that age group getting married – compared with the corresponding figure for 1970, when 81 per cent of women under 25 and 62 per cent of men had tied the knot.
The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, warned: ‘The Government should be putting more money into marriage education.
‘Teaching young people about relationships should be more than just giving them facts about sex.’ Experts warned the trend puts young people more at risk of a broken relationship as cohabiting couples are more likely to split.
Sir Paul Coleridge of the Marriage Foundation said: ‘Teenagers have bought into the myth that informal cohabitation delivers the same longterm security for their families, when that arrangement is three times more likely to end before their children become teenagers.’