How marriage has changed from baby boomers to millennials

• Millennials are waiting longer to get married and have children than baby boomers did.
• Millennials are more open to interracial and interfaith relationships than older Americans.
• The cost of weddings is rising, but the divorce rate is decreasing.

Millennials are doing marriage differently than their parents and grandparents. They're often lambasted for "killing" industries or struggling to "adult," but they're also more accepting of interfaith and interracial relationships, are striving for more egalitarian housekeeping and parenting roles, and are getting divorced at a lower rate than baby boomers.

Here are nine ways that marriage has changed recently.

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Most couples meet through friends, but more and more millennials are meeting their significant others online.

A recent study published in the journal American Sociological Review looked at how couples met between 1940 and 2010. It surveyed more than 3,000 American adults.

Most continue to meet through friends the way they have for six decades, but the popularity of meeting people online has skyrocketed. In 2010, it nearly overtook the number of couples who met at a bar or restaurant.

 

Millennials are waiting longer to get married.

INSIDER Data analyzed US Census Bureau data and found that the average age of men and women at their first marriage has increased over time.

In 1940, the average age of men at their first marriage was 24.3, and the average age of women was 21.5. From 1950 until the late 1970s, the average ages of men and women dipped to 23 and 20, respectively. But since the 1980s, the average ages of first weddings have been increasing. For men, the average age has climbed from 25 in the late '80s to 29.8 in 2018. For women, the average age went from 23 to 27.8.

According to a 2016 Gallup poll, 20% of Americans ages 18 to 30 are married, compared to 32% of Gen X-ers and 40% of baby boomers when they were the same age.

Interracial marriage wasn't legal nationwide until 1967.

When baby boomers were getting married for the first time, there were laws in place dictating who they were and weren't allowed to marry that have since been disbanded. In 1967, the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia struck down states' antimiscegenation laws as unconstitutional. 

The Pew Research Center found in 2010 that millennials are "significantly more likely to be accepting of interracial marriage" than older age groups. They found that 73% of 30 to 49 year olds, 55% of 50 to 64 year olds, and just 38% of those ages 65 and older say they would be fine with a family member's marriage to someone of another race or ethnicity. For millennials (18 to 29 year olds), that number is more like 90%.

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