Approximately every third marriage gets disrupted. Fertility rate is dropping. 397,122 children in the US live without permanent families. The notion of family is transforming. So is our attitude to traditional family values. Gays are not the reason, they are the cause. It is not possible for LGBT community to affect our mentality, we are the ones destroying the image and value of traditional family in the US.
I'd say the cause of the drop in marriage rates is four fold;
1) the changing nature of marriage from a financial arrangement to a matter of love
2) The growing priority of short term happiness
3) the growing financial independence of women.
4) The increasing lack of social stigma for declining to marry or having children out of wedlock.
Marriage in the past was largely a financial arrangement. Women didn't have access to most jobs (or in some cases, any jobs). So marriage was effectively their own reliable route to financial security for themselves and their children. Marriage was a dominant subordinate relationship, with women largely relegated to the status of property.
While the explicit status of property for women in our nation has never been explicit, its forms and influences lingered for quite a long time. It wasn't until the last generation or two that men and women were considered co-equals in a marriage.
Marriage for love is also a remarkably new invention. Its barely older the steam engine. For millennia before that marriage was an arrangement between families. Or between a man and a woman (or women, depending on the culture) for the mutual financial benefit of both. With the man providing the external resources and a woman providing the child care and labor to make the house run. Now its largely about romance.
This emphasis on love over practicality leads into reason 2
There's a societal shift to focus on short term happiness. Thus, if someone isn't happy in a marriage they'll often exit it rather than fix the situation within the union. Marriages ebb and flow. There are good years. There are bad. All too often, the moment a bad year or two is reached the marriage ends. Even if the marriage is functioning well in every other regard.
The emphasis of romance only exacerbates this. As long term relationships tend to lack that initial thrill. The affection is deeper and more comfortable. But not quite as exciting and volatile as when the relationship began. Some see this natural progression as a form of failure, having bought into the idea of continual romance as a baseline rather than an accent.
There's also the 'Bigger, Better Deal', or the 'grass is greener' syndrome. When folks are younger, they tend to focus on getting the best quality mate they can. Thus, it makes sense to always try to upgrade. But once you settle on an individual, maintaining the BBD mindset is a recipe for dissatisfaction, adultery and marital collapse. Consumer culture and the marketing of instant gratification has an effect on marriage as well, extending this BBD period beyond courting and into marriage itself.
Most divorces are initiated by women. In the past, most were initiated by men. I think the shift in numbers is the product of the reduction in consequences for a divorce. Women are increasingly independent financially, with virtually every job available to a man available to a woman. They don't necessarily need marriage in order to support themselves and their children. Where in the past where women had little or no access to jobs, divorce for happiness would have been nearly suicidal.
The reduced consequences result in reduced social stigma. Prohibitions against pre-marital sex were much stronger in the past because the consequences were so much stronger. Before the era of reliable birth control, sex almost inevitably lead to pregnancy. And a pregnant woman without the financial support of marriage would typically find a very, very hard road.
While single parenthood isn't a picnic, its not the near certain road to catastrophe it was before. We have far better social support in place. Much better access to jobs for mothers. Alimony. Child support. School lunches. Medicare. WIC. All mitigating the consequences of pregnancy outside of marriage. And reasonably inexpensive, reliable birth control that makes pregnancy outside of marriage far from a certainty.
In response, social stigma has reduced across all these fronts proportionally. And with the reduction in stigma, there's less social disincentive to get get divorced.
