The Pew Research Center has released a report showing married couples decreasing up to 51% of U.S. households for 2010. A drop of 5% was discovered with new marriages from 2009 to 2010.

Figures for 2011 aren't final yet, but if the said decline had been continued last year, lower than 50% of adult citizens would be presently in a legal marriage.

So, is marriage fading away?

The striking decrease in marriage is remarkably the opposite of how things are 50 years ago. During 1960, nearly 50% of 18-to-24-year-olds and about 82% of the 25-to-34-year-olds were engaged in legal marriage. In 2010, these two figures are being replaced by 9% and 44% respectively.

The age of marriage has been declining since1900, but it dropped from 1940 to 1955. The average age of women getting married went down as much as in the following half-century. In 1960, 50% of all 20-year-old women were legally married.

The annual conference held by the Child Study Association Of America in 1962 declared that the early marriage is an element of the upsetting declining of the standards when it comes to marriage, schooling, employment as well as the creation of long-term goals.

Experts put the blame on parents, who are too concerned about their children's "immediate happiness" insisting they're practicing self-control. Hundreds of articles actually encouraged the young ones to say "no" to marriage unless they have already completed their studies and got jobs.

The preceding generations of youth surprisingly followed the advice. Currently, first marriages are now mostly involved by 27-year-old women and 29-year-old men, far from the 20 and 22 in 1960.

This, however, doesn't mean that marriage has become a rare institution.

It is true that there are more couples are getting divorced now compared to the population in 1960, but the rates of divorce have been dropping for the last 30 years. It appeared that more individuals today will remain unmarried all their lives compared to the past.