Made for More Than Marriage-Avoidance

The headlines keep circling the same question: why are men opting out of marriage?

September 11, 2025

Analysts point to economics – stagnant wages, housing costs, shifting job markets. Researchers point to culture – a generation raised on radical individualism, allergic to obligation.

Both are probably right. But neither gets at the deeper wound.

Men aren’t just avoiding a contract. Many have never been shown what marriage is actually for.

If manhood is marketed as independence, self-optimization, and staying unattached, then of course marriage looks like a loss option – something you delay as long as possible.

But that’s not the Christian vision of masculinity, and it’s not the one that actually makes men come alive.

Real strength was never about avoiding responsibility – it’s about carrying it for someone else. A husband’s vocation is to love sacrificially, the way Christ loved the Church: not holding back, not keeping score, but pouring himself out for his wife and children.

That’s not a smaller life than independence. It’s a bigger one.

We (Byron and Francine Pirola) wrote about this vision earlier this month on SmartLoving – that the world doesn’t need fewer committed men, it needs stronger ones, formed for self-gift rather than self-protection. This week’s data just proves the point.

Sources:

“Analysts See Social and Economic Changes Pushing Men Not to Marry,” Washington Times, Sept 7, 2026;

Joseph E. Davis, “Young Men Against the Individualist Ethic,” Institute for Family Studies, Sept 1, 2026.