Millions of single Americans are marrying for the first time later than their parents. These late starters find it socially acceptable to marry and have families in their 30s and even 40s, according to research.

According to the Pew Research Center statistics, in 1960 the average woman got married for the first time at age 20 and men married at around 23. In the most recent data, from 2010, Pew reports American women on average are getting married for the first time at 26.5, and the average man is waiting until nearly 29.

Pew statistics, reported in December 2011, found that in 1960, 72 percent of all adults ages 18 and older were married. By 2010, that figure had dropped to just 51 percent.

“If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years,” Pew researchers said in a news release.

Some social conservatives fear that numbers suggest that Americans find marriage obsolete. That apparently is not so. American men and women continue to say that marriage is very important to them. In 2001 and 2002, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 55 percent of the women and 47 percent of the men said that marriage is “very important” part of life; another 29 percent of women and 35 percent of men said it is “somewhat important.” Significantly, only 12 percent of the women and 13 percent of the men ranked marriage as “not very important,” and a “measly” 5 percent of both men and woman said marriage was not at all. By 25, 33 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men are already married, and another 30 percent of the women and 19 percent of the men wanted to be married.

It has been suggested by a new study that a “significant minority of persons and couples on the brink of divorce actively desire a chance for reconciliation.” It is because of research like this that William J. Doherty, a marriage therapist and director of the Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project, and his colleague Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, a leader of the Commission on Children, Marriage, and Family Law, wrote “Second Chances: A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce.”

In this publication, the two propose that states should “require pre-filing education for divorcing parents.” They also add to that, saying “states could simultaneously establish a waiting period for divorce of at least one year (currently in some states the waiting periods are as short as ninety days), while providing a voluntary early notification letter that spouses can use to let their spouse know their intentions without necessarily filing for divorce.” States could then combine these reforms into a single piece of legislation called the “Second Chances Act.”

This proposal is not saying that everyone should try and reconcile their marriage. In fact, no one advocates for keeping destructive marriages together. However, anywhere from 50 to 66 percent of divorces (depending on the study) occur in couples who “had average happiness and low levels of conflict in the years prior to the divorce.” It is precisely because of marriages like this that Doherty and Sears feel their proposal is a reasonable one, and they continue to advocate divorcing couples to take the steps before a divorce to “pause, take a breath, and reflect on their relationship and its prospects before moving forward in the divorce process.”

A University of York economist claims the idea parenting makes us happy is an illusion.

In an article The Psychologist, Dr. Nattavudh Powdthavee, of the University’s Department of Economics and Related Studies and an expert in the economics of happiness, says that having children does not increase happiness. This surprising conclusion in the research of wellbeing may shed light in the dynamics of marital failure.

“Social scientists have found almost zero association between having children and happiness,” Powdthavee says. “In a recent study of British adults for example we found that parents and non-parents reported the same levels of life satisfaction. Other studies from Europe and the USA found that parents report significantly lower levels of satisfaction than people who haven’t had children.”

Dr. Powdthavee suggests that the widespread belief that having children increase happiness can be explained as a “‘focusing illusion.”

“To imagine what it’s like being a mother or a father we’re likely to focus more on the good things about being a parent than the bad things. This is mainly because we believe that the rare but meaningful experiences like a child’s first smile or seeing them get married will give us massive and long-lasting increases in happiness. But in reality, we rarely think about these big experiences on a daily basis, simply because they do not occur to us every day. Instead, parents spend much of their time attending to the very core processes of childcare – problems at school, cooking and laundry – which are much more frequent but a lot less salient events. And it is these small but negative experiences that are more likely to impact on our day-to-day levels of happiness and life satisfaction.”

Right after the myth of second marriages comes the myth of cohabitation; that is that living together (playing house) before getting married provides a better chance of staying married. That seems to make sense. The man and woman get to know each other before they become husband and wife. Living together before marriage means fewer surprises for the couple later when they tie the knot. Some analogize cohabitation more prosaically: no one buys a pair of shoes without trying them on first.

This idea, which has become very popular, appeals to common sense, and couples that at one time might have married now live together in informal and fluid cohabitation. While many couples eventually marry, many do not, and thus it is difficult to keep track of cohabitation relationships. Some couples cohabit for practical reasons and do not foresee marriage.

No one can doubt the surge in the number of cohabitating couples. Between 1960 and 1998, the number of unmarried, cohabiting couples increased from 439,000 to 4.2 million – a tenfold increase, and greater than the rates of marriage and divorce. These informal unions come into existence and dissolve much more easily than marriages and divorces. The formation and dissolutions increase the fluidity in American life. About half of the couples that first cohabited eventually marry, however.

A number of studies strongly suggest that those who live together before marriage have higher separation and divorce rates than those who do not. The National Survey of Families and Households indicates that “unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared with all first marriages: 57 percent to 30 percent.” One study suggest that living in a non-marital union “has a direct negative impact on subsequent marital stability” perhaps because living in such a union “undermines the legitimacy of formal marriage’ and so reduces the commitment of marriage.”

Of couples whose cohabitation ends without marriage, one writer suggests that those who cohabit “drift from one partner to another in search of the right person.” So a caveat is in order. Evidence suggests “when cohabitation is limited to a person’s future spouse, there is no elevated risk of divorce.”

Marriage is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, so perhaps cohabitation adds the part without producing the whole.

Many people that the children of divorce enjoy a better chance of marital success as adults. Alas, the children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce than those who grow up in intact families. The pain and suffering of divorce appears to have no transfer value to the children of broken homes. This divorce myth, like many, appears rational: “Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.”

According to David Popenoe at Rutgers, this intuitive observation, though comforting, is wrong. In fact, the reverse is true; parental divorce also reduces the odds of marital success for the children of divorce. “Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than children from intact families. A major reason for this…is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment has been undermined.”

“Divorce does not doom children, but children have a leg up on life if their parents have a reasonably healthy marriage and make it work,” says Scott M. Stanley of the University of Denver and the author of The Power of Commitment: a Guide to Active, Lifelong Love.

Stanley suggests that divorce raises the risk of “various negative outcomes for children by a factor of two or three. For example, the likelihood of children from intact homes having behavior problems is 10 percent while it is roughly 30 percent for children from divorced homes. So, most children of divorce do not exhibit behavior problems but the odds are significantly greater that they will.”

Children of divorce have “more difficulties, especially in the relationship with the father: 70 percent of the children of divorced parents report having a poor relationship with their father” against 30 percent of the children from intact homes.

Stanley says the children of divorce have a “[g]reater difficulty believing their own marriage will last, not matter how much they want it do…” His numbers appear to support his argument. When one marital partner is a child of divorce, the odds of divorce in his or her marriage double. “When both partners are children of divorced parents, their odds of divorce are nearly triple that of other couples.”

Popenoe suggests that divorce appears to be a learned response and that when faced with marital problems, the children of divorce respond the way they have seen their parents respond. Seen this way, divorce in families could almost be seen as an inherited behavior response.

One of the more popular divorce myths goes like this: “Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.” From this, people unhappy about their marriages drew several postulates and corollaries. “When parents don’t get along, children are better off if the parents divorce than if they stay together.” And from that, “If I’m not happy in my marriage, my children may do better if I divorce, because they will be better in life if I am not so unhappy.” Or put simply, children typically fair well during and after a divorce.

Until the liberalization of divorce in the 1970s, many unhappy couples stayed married “for the sake of the children.” Many spouses endured an unhappy marriage to prevent children from growing up in a broken home.

The truth is, divorce hurts children, and even under the best conditions, it is traumatic for them.

Judith Wallerstein, the author of The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study, suggests that children, once thought very resilient to the dislocations of their parents’ breakup, struggle for a lifetime with the residue of a decision their parents made.

Wallerstein’s 2000 study tracks a group of 131 children over 25 years. According to her, “If the truth be told, and if we are able to face it, the history of divorce in our society is replete with unwarranted assumptions that adults have made about children since because such assumptions are congenial with adult needs and wishes. The myths that continue to guide our divorce policies and politics today stem from these direct attitudes.”

Some qualification is in order. Most therapists and counselors differentiate between what are called high- conflict and low-conflict marriages. In both, the partners are unhappy. High-conflict marriages, however, are those where the home atmosphere is actually dangerous to wife and mother as well as the children. Most authorities agree that high-conflict marriages must and should end. Low-conflict marriages, the ones heading for the rocks because the partners cannot get along, sometimes can be turned around if the spouses want to save the marriage.

Cathy Meyer, who writes about marriage and family issues, suggests that the happy parent-happy children idea objectifies children. Unhappy parents fail to understand that, though they may be unhappy, “their children are probably quite content and don’t care if their parents don’t get along as long as their family is together.”

“A child’s happiness is not dependent on their parent’s happiness. A child’s happiness stems from routine, having a home, two parents, friends to play with, school activities to be involved in and being able to count on these things being constant day in and day out,” Meyer writes.