Singles' Marriage Aspirations Moving in Right Direction

A study by the marriage project has found that young singles are intensely averse to divorce and want to marry a lifelong "soul mate." That's good news for a generation that has been so negatively affected by divorce.

But the study also found that these same young people believe that living together, rather than dating, yields more information about a partner.

A Gallup poll found that 44 percent of young people had co-habited. Of these, nearly half of the men and more than a third of the women had lived with more than one partner.

The study, authored by author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, a sociology professor at Rutgers University, says that marriage has vanished as the normal rite of passage for sexual involvement, parenthood, economic growth and religious and public adulthood. Whitehead says an upside is that 86 percent of young people believe marriage is hard work and a full-time job. Let's hope more of them treat their own that way.