LONDON, April 1 (Xinhua) -- People in Britain who marry before they turn 30 are now in a minority, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Monday.
Nick Stripe, head of life events at ONS, has carried out a detailed analysis of the changing face of matrimony across the country over almost half a century.
It followed the latest ONS statistics showing that most people are now aged 30 or above before wedding bells ring out.
Stripe said that in the 1970s around 28 percent of all women were married by the age of 20, over 77 percent were married by age 25, and more than 9 in 10 were married before they turned 30.
ONS figures show that in the 1970s the average age of people who got married for the first time was 22.8 years for women and 25.1 years for men. The first baby after marriage usually arrived within a few years.
Over the last 50 or so years, the number of marriages has declined and the average age at which people get married has climbed ever higher. The median age at first marriage has risen by more than eight years to 31.5 for women and 33.4 for men.
The proportion of women who had married by the age of 30 first dropped from below 50 percent in 2002 to just 30 percent today.
The proportion of men marrying for a first time by the age of 30 now stands at just under 1 in 4 men, a fall from more than 8 in 10 in 1976.
In an age when more couples are cohabiting, or "living in sin" as it was once called, the average age at which parents have their first child is now three years younger than the average age when people first get married.
By 2016, said Stripe, almost 9 in 10 couples had been cohabiting before marriage and "this fact points to a dramatic cultural change that has taken place over the last 50 to 60 years.
Back in the mid 1950s, before the 'sexual revolution' and the Abortion and Divorce Reform Acts, only about 5 percent of babies were born to parents who were not married. This is now the case for just under half of all new-born babies."
