Does Gen Z still want to get married? (Part 2/4)

Gen Z marriage: later does not necessarily mean less wanted

One of the strongest pieces of evidence comes from a 2025 study using representative data from 33 European countries. Researchers looked at how 18-to-34-year-olds imagine major transitions into adulthood, including leaving home, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. Young Europeans still tended to consider it ideal to cohabit, marry, and have children in their twenties. The problem was that, in reality, these transitions happened later than the ages they considered ideal. The gap was particularly pronounced for marriage and parenthood. [1]

That distinction matters. If we only observe behavior, it is easy to conclude that marriage is losing relevance. But behavior is also shaped by what is possible. Housing, longer education, work, financial insecurity, and the time required to build a stable relationship can all change when marriage happens without necessarily eliminating the desire for it.

The demographic evidence confirms that the timing has shifted significantly. Eurostat reports that the mean age at first marriage increased in all 20 EU countries for which comparable 2004–2024 data are available. In 2024, women married for the first time at an average age of 35.2 in Spain and Sweden, while Swedish men averaged 37.4. Romania was at the younger end, with 28.4 for women and 31.5 for men.

So perhaps the better question is not, “Why does Gen Z not want marriage?” It is: what happens when people still want the milestone, but the road towards it becomes longer?

The couple has not disappeared

French data provides another useful correction to the idea that younger generations have abandoned committed relationships. The INED Envie study of more than 10,000 French people aged 18 to 29 found that 66% had been in a couple during the previous twelve months. One-night stands and other forms of relationships certainly exist, but the couple remains by far the dominant form of intimate relationship.

What has changed is how institutionalized these relationships are. Among young adults who had been in a couple, fewer than one-third had lived together, 9% had been in a PACS, and only 7% had been married. Yet 77% described themselves as very much in love with their partner and another 17% as quite in love.

That is a fascinating disconnect: emotional commitment can arrive much earlier than institutional commitment. 20 or 30 years ago, marriage was often one of the mechanisms through which a relationship became socially recognized as serious. For Gen Z, the relationship can already be serious without it. Marriage therefore has to do something different.

Cohabitation no longer has to compete with marriage

Another mistake would be to interpret rising acceptance of cohabitation as evidence that marriage is disappearing.

A 2025 study involving 48,246 people aged 21 to 45 compared attitudes towards marriage and cohabitation across Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, and Norway between 2004–2009 and 2020–2023. The researchers did not find one universal European move away from marriage. In Czechia and Estonia, people had actually become less likely to consider marriage outdated. At the same time, acceptance of cohabitation remained high and increased in some countries. [2] This suggests that cohabitation and marriage no longer need to be opposites.

You can believe that living together without marrying is completely legitimate and still want to marry yourself. You can cohabit for years before marrying. Or you can decide that marriage adds nothing important to your relationship. That freedom is itself part of the change.

A smaller 2025 study of 462 Gen Z university students in Poland found something similar. The students broadly accepted marriage, cohabitation, and remaining single, but marriage remained their preferred relationship model. The authors rightly note that local cultural and religious context matters, so we should not project those findings across Europe. But the pattern is instructive: accepting alternatives does not automatically mean rejecting marriage. [3]

Marriage is moving from obligation to choice

For me, this is where the story becomes much more interesting than a simple yes-or-no. Marriage used to sit inside a fairly recognizable adult script. Finish education. Find work. Leave home. Find a partner. Marry. Buy a home. Have children. The exact sequence varied, of course, but the milestones reinforced one another. That sequence has weakened.

Eurostat reports that 41% of births in the EU in 2024 occurred outside marriage, and in countries such as France, Bulgaria, and Portugal the share was close to or above 60%. Marriage is therefore no longer required before one of the biggest traditional milestones of adult life: becoming a parent. Once marriage is no longer necessary to legitimize sex, cohabitation, adulthood, or even parenthood, choosing to marry becomes something different.

Marriage moves from default to decision.

Paradoxically, losing its obligatory character does not necessarily make marriage meaningless. It may make the decision itself more meaningful. If you do not have to marry, saying “I want to” becomes more intentional.

That also helps explain why we should be careful when describing Gen Z as becoming “more traditional”. A recent British survey reported by The Times found that nearly two-thirds of 18-to-27-year-olds considered marriage important, while only about one in five considered it irrelevant. The same research also pointed towards less casual sex than in a comparable survey of young adults two decades earlier.

Those are interesting signals. But wanting marriage does not automatically mean wanting traditional gender roles, traditional divisions of labor, or the relationship model of previous generations. You can keep the institution and renegotiate the contract.