"...Census Bureau statistics [show] that in 1998 there were more than 3 million divorced 18- to 29-year-olds. There were 253,000 divorces among 25- to 29-year-olds in 1962. Meanwhile, the average age of first marriages has risen to 25, compared with 20 in the 1950s."

(Source: "'Starter Marriages:' Are Gen Xers Really Ready to Walk Down the Aisle?" ABC.com, January 25, 2002, accessed at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA020125Feature_starter_marriage.html.)

"Divorce has long been common within the first five years of marriage, but today marriages are ending progressively earlier. And the new young divorces are a bit different from their predecessors; rather than becoming single moms and alimony dads, we're divorcing before having children. Because while we still marry relatively young, we increasingly delay childbirth. The average age of first-time mothers has been steadily rising since 1972, and more couples are delaying children for three, four, five years into their marriage. First marriages aren't exactly new, but starter marriages are more prevalent.

...A starter home is that first house you buy knowing full well that the bedroom is smaller than you'd like, the kitchen has no windows, and the insulation will have to be replaced. You accept these faults and make certain compromises knowing that you'll only be there temporarily or that you'll improve it. The difference between a starter marriage and a starter home is that virtually nobody who enters a starter marriage thinks he's in it for the short term and will eventually upgrade to a better marriage."

(Source: Pamela Paul, Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, Random House, 2002; excerpt accessed at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA020125_StarterMarriage.html.)

For young women who have watched their own parents divorce, it is no easy thing to find romantic satisfaction in their own lives.  Indeed, in a study recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Texas-Austin report that, compared to peers from intact families, the young adult daughters of divorced parents find less satisfaction in their romantic relationships and evince a higher level of mistrust toward their romantic partners.   

Examining data from 464 randomly-selected coupled partners, the California and Texas scholars discovered that "compared with women from intact families, women from divorced families reported more ambivalence about becoming involved (p < .05) and more conflict and negativity in their relationships (p < .01)."  Compared to women from intact families, women from broken homes were also "less likely to trust in their partner's benevolence" (p < .03).  Not surprisingly, then, young women from divorced families "valued consistency of commitment less than did women from intact families" (p < .04).  The authors of the new study concede the possibility that women from divorced families actually have "a more realistic understanding" of their relationships with romantic partners than do women from intact families.  Nevertheless, the researchers express fears that in the mistrust, conflict, and ambivalence characteristic of daughters of divorce, we are seeing the reason that these young women "may not advance to deeper involvements."  The researchers further reason that for the daughters of divorce, the feelings of ambivalence and mistrust they are experiencing in their current relationships "may be the segue to later difficulties," thus helping to explain why "adult children of divorce who eventually wed are more likely to divorce than are adult children from intact families."

(Source: Susan E. Jacquet and Catherine A. Surra, "Parental Divorce and Premarital Couples: Commitment and Other Relationship Characteristics," Journal of Marriage and the Family 63[2001]: 627-638.)