A 22-Point Plunge: Teen Girls’ Interest in Marriage Has Collapsed Since the ’90s

Plus, Nicki Minaj teams up with the Trump admin, the allure of Madison, Wisconsin, and another gen zer is running for Congress.

There’s been a 22-point drop in teen girls’ desire to get married over the past three decades. And now, teen girls are less likely than teen boys to say they want to get married.

That’s according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from The University of Michigan’s ‘Monitoring the Future’ study.

By the numbers:

• In 2023, 61% of 12th grade girls said they are “most likely to choose to get married” down from 83% in 1993 — a 22-point drop.

• In 2023, 74% of 12th grade boys said the same, essentially unchanged from 76% in 1993.

So while teen boys’ interest in marriage has pretty much stayed the same, something has clearly shifted for girls — producing a 13-point gender gap in teens’ marriage desire.

Screenshot of Pew Research Center data.

The drop-off in girls’ interest in marriage is pulling down overall interest in marriage and parenthood.

• In 2023, 67% of 12th graders said they want to get married someday.

• 30 years ago, in 1993, 80% of 12th graders said the same.

• That’s a 13-point drop overall in three decades.

And if they do get married…

• In 2023, just 48% of 12th graders said it is “very likely” they would have kids.

• In 1993, that number was 64%.

These trends confirm what we’ve been hearing from The Up and Up’s Gen Z Community.

Boys talk about wanting a wife, while girls talk about wanting a secure, stable, and fulfilling life.

And not so fast, trad wives. The data also flies in the face of the rise of trad-wife content online, which has romanticized domesticity and traditional gender roles.

None of this is surprising. Beyond a well-documented partisan gender divide, we’ve seen a gap in girls and boys life priorities emerge in our research for years. You may remember our intern Brooke’s summer op-ed on what she learned about the gender gap by growing up with her twin. Or our take on NBC News’ Decision Desk fall poll on young men and women’s diverging visions of success — in which young men ranked having kids and getting married as higher priorities than young women.

The Up and Up’s take: Girls are outpacing boys in school, college, and early career ambition. A generation of young women, growing up with less rights than their mothers and grandmothers had at their age, have absorbed, more than any before them, that their futures depend on self-sufficiency, not necessarily romance. Meanwhile, the data shows the downstream effect where boys want marriage at roughly the same rate they always have. Girls don’t — at least not as soon, and not at any cost.

Relatedly there was a Vogue piece heard around the world last month that posed a timely question: “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”

We talk *a lot* about the youth partisan gender gap. We even saw that gap show up in this month’s election results. But gen z’s gender gap runs much deeper than politics. Girls and boys are diverging, not only in ideology, but in the futures they imagine for themselves. In fact, their different POVs on life, shaped by both online and offline culture, and especially classroom culture, are influencing how they interact from a young age. Teenage girls’ declining interest in marriage is a marker of a broader shift rooted in opportunity, safety, ambition, and the very different messages each gender hears about what adulthood requires.

So, what’s changed over the past 30 years to create this flip? Basically everything. Social media. Shifts in classroom norms. Girls outpacing boys in high school and college graduation rates. Women rising in STEM. And, for gen z, they’ve come of age in a post-Lean In and post-Me Too era. Perhaps more than ever, there’s a visible world for women outside of marriage and kids. Ironically, however, that comes as women’s rights have been stripped away in a post-Roe environment, where young women have basically been taught they have to defend themselves because no one else will.

But there’s a piece to this data that we don’t talk about enough.

In most of my conversations with teen girls, they aren’t saying they don’t want kids at all. They’re just saying it feels like they have important things to accomplish first. They’re education-oriented, job-driven, and focused on building financial stability. They feel a responsibility to secure their futures because they know they can. And maybe, after that, they’ll consider marriage and kids.

Meanwhile, public discourse tends to focus on boys falling behind as a result of women’s material progress, often framing young men as lonely, left out, toxic, or struggling. When that message becomes constant, it begins to sink in. And it breeds frustration. For both young men and women.

All of this outside noise has created a generation of teens who are increasingly talking past each other. And there are few people committed to creating spaces for them to come together and share how they really feel.

Grounding in the news… This might feel removed from our current political dialogue. But it’s actually squarely relevant. Amid the scrutiny of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s network of many powerful men, including President Donald Trump, there have been reopened questions about the norms and behavior that was excused for far too long. At the same time, the rise of figures like Nick Fuentes, who appeals to young men who feel left behind, shows how gender frustration can be weaponized. (Fuentes has posted “your body, my choice” while leading the “Groyper” movement, which is wrapped up in misogyny, and is described by the New York Times as “young, racist and antisemitic.”) These are edge cases, but they tap into the same undercurrent where gender is shaping how young people see themselves, each other, and their place in the world.

** Listen to my conversation on these themes with

The Bulwark

’s

Sarah Longwell

for ‘The Focus Group’ podcast here! **

In other news

• Another gen zer is running for Congress

• Madison, Wisconsin is apparently the top city for young workers

• Nicki Minaj partnered with President Donald Trump’s UN Ambassador

Noteworthy reads

• How Five Gen-Zers Are Playing This Year’s Volatile Market, Dalvin Brown and Oyin Adedoyin for The Wall Street Journal

• Inside Mamdani’s Viral Video Team, Lauren Egan for The Bulwark

• The Matcha Problem, Ellen Cushing for The Atlantic