Marriage in America is on the rocks.

So finds a new report, the first in what is intended to be an annual review

of the institution, by a Rutgers think tank.

We endlessly analyze so much of our culture, from fashion trends to TV

characters, but an activity as fundamental as marriage has gotten short

shrift, according to this group, The National Marriage Project.

"The State of Our Unions" report, released in July, is based on existing

data from the U.S. Census, a University of Chicago survey, and another from

the University of Michigan. But the Rutgers report, says sociology

professor David Popenoe, examines those old numbers through a new filter --

what they say about marriage.

Though Popenoe, who wrote "Life Without Father" and Barbara Dafoe

Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project and author of a

famous Atlantic Monthly article titled "Dan Quayle Was Right," receive

funding from mostly conservative foundations, he insists they're not

pushing a right-wing agenda. "We just want more national discussion about

this, that's all," says Popenoe, 66.

Q. What was your most significant finding?

A. That marriage is a weakening institution. There are not too many signs

for optimism, although there are some. Because marriage is so central to

the family and the family is so central to society, we should be talking

about and finding ways to help people, especially young people, to have

stronger marriages. That, by the way, is what the huge majority of them

still want to have. Perhaps the most surprising finding is that for young

people, high school seniors, two things are going on. They seem to hold

marriage in even higher esteem than in previous decades. But, at the same

time, young people, and girls especially, are more pessimistic about ever

achieving that goal.

Q. Your report shows the marriage rate is down by 35 percent since 1970.

What does this mean?

A. The major thing that's going on here is that people are delaying

marriage. The age of marriage is going up. And in societies where marriages

begin to be delayed, the actual marriage rate also begins to drop. People

wait too long. Then they just give up. They don't marry. Or they live

together outside of marriage. You have a tremendous growth in non-marital

cohabitation, and that begins to signal to people that maybe we don't

really need marriage. The breakup rate of cohabiting partners is far, far

higher than marriage partners.

Q. Is marriage, the institution, soon to end?

A. Certainly not in any time we can foresee. It really has weakened very

much in recent decades, and every indication is that it's going to continue

to weaken. I think it's something we should be talking about and looking

into -- the benefits of marriage. In a situation where you had a nearly 50

percent divorce rate and a nearly 32 percent out-of-wedlock birth rate, if

you had those types of things in some other area of health, it would be a

national disaster. But, here, with marriage, we talk about it sort of

benignly. And actually, we don't talk much about it.

Q. The report showed that young people still hope to get married some day,

but how does that fit with the other finding -- that many of them, young

women especially, simply don't think they will marry?

A. I think that we can, as a nation, build on the fact that there still is

this drive or desire to get married. At the same time, we should be worried

that there's all this growing pessimism. In the sense that it's realistic,

there's not much you can do about it. More and more people who are mating

today have never seen a good marriage.

The nature of marriage has changed so much. It has become a kind of a close

friendship with a sexual relationship between a man and a woman. That's a

change.

Before, it was a multifaceted institution. A partnership that was legally

bound, typically a religious partnership, and a partnership between two

families. Just because the husband and wife didn't get along wasn't a

reason to break up. Also, in times past, men, by and large, had mostly male

friends and women had mostly female friends.

Today, we're together in an entirely different way. It's stripped down,

mainly, to the two of them. They're best friends, often isolated, alone,

and this is something pretty new. When it works out, it's wonderful. When

it doesn't, which is 50 percent of the time, it breaks up.

Since marriage has changed -- I think for the good -- we have an

educational job to do.

Q. What's wrong with people marrying later?

A. Absolutely nothing. As long as they have marriage clearly in mind. I'll

take that back, not nothing. The studies show that young marriages,

especially in teen years, have an especially high rate of divorce. Once you

get to the mid-20s, those youthful concerns cancel out. Of course, there

are lots of good reasons to delay. The downside is that you get used to

living as an independent single person -- and increasingly as a single

person in a live-in sexual partnership with someone. When marriage finally

comes in the 30s, it's a big shift, and that's difficult for people. So I

don't know. My grand design is for people to marry relatively late, but to

somehow be fixed in their minds to be eventually married and to be planning

for it, rather than just be partaking in this freewheeling single way of

life.

Q. Can single people be happy?

A. Oh sure . . . You certainly don't need marriage for happiness. On the

other hand, married people do tend to be happier across the population. Not

only happier, but healthier, wealthier, and more long-lived. There really

is a benefit to having another person permanently to go through life with

you. We've barely even talked about children. There's a tremendous benefit

to children having a stable family structure they can rely upon.

Q. Are you married and for how long?

A. Yes. For 40 years.