Marriage and Family-Building Patterns of University Graduates

Abstract

The findings relating to marriage and fertility of the National Survey of 1960 Graduates show that highly-educated people are on the whole no exception to the generally observed principle of social and educational endogamy. Those from working-class homes, however, marry overwhelmingly into the middle class, so that marriage here constitutes a means of consolidating newly-won status. Respondents on the whole tended to delay marriage and family building while still engaged in full-time study, but more graduates are ultimately marrying and are doing so at younger ages than ever before. There are also certain consistent differences between the sexes, which indicate that women graduates are much more susceptible than men to the delaying influences on marriage and family building of the continued exposure to higher education.

Patterns of Family Building and Contraceptive Use of Middle-Class Couples

“…In only eight cases was the first child pre-maritally conceived; this represents 7-7 % of all marriages, compared with 29 % of the Hull marriages surveyed in 1965-66 (Peel, 1970), and 14-6% of the mothers in Social Classes I and II and 25% of all mothers in Cartwright's 1973survey (Cartwright, 1976. The proportion of pre-marital conceptions found in the present study is similar to that found in the larger 1966 survey of graduates, and is not only lower than that found in other studies, but is also rather lower than might be expected for this group, given that before marriage almost all of the respondents had been living in environments where the opportunity for pre-marital sexual activity and sanctions against it were probably rather different from those of young people living at home (Kelsall et al, 1971). This implies that either these people were postponing sexual gratification until after marriage, or were engaging in intercourse but were employing birth control techniques-in most cases effectively.…”

“…Since the Second World War this has decreasingly been the case but graduates' marriage rates are still slightly lower than the national average due in part to their tendency to marry rather later than other women (Hubback, 1955). It has been noted elsewhere that higher education tends to have a delaying effect on marriage (Perrucci, 1968;Kelsall, Poole & Kuhn, 1971). Almost all of the couples interviewed waited to complete their education before marriage.…”