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A growing number of high school girls are losing interest in marriage, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. One marriage expert says changing messages from Hollywood and parents could be a factor.
“We’ve changed the stories we tell our young people,” said JP De Gance, founder and president of the marriage ministry Communio, in an interview with Fox News Digital. “And that’s changed their imagination of what the future might look like.”
The Pew analysis, based on 2023 data from the University of Michigan, found that just 61% of 12th-grade girls want to marry someday, down from 83% in 1993. Among boys, the number held steady at 74% — now higher than girls for the first time.
The poll also found fewer high school boys and girls expect to have children if they marry someday. In 2023, 48% of 12th graders said it was “very likely” they’d want to have children, compared with 64% in 1993.
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De Gance said changing entertainment trends have influenced how young people view marriage.
“The most common storyteller for young people, historically, has been Disney,” he said. Happy endings where the lead character “gets the girl” or the guy were once a staple of Disney’s classic films, he explained.
That theme dominated through the 1990s but began to shift after “Tarzan” (1999), he said, noting that later films such as “Tangled” were exceptions to this pattern.
Since then, De Gance argued, the traditional “happily ever after” ending has been replaced by stories focused on independence and self-discovery. One recent example of this was 2025’s live-action “Snow White” remake, which does away with the “prince” character and downplays the love story angle from the original animated film.
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Another key factor, De Gance believes, is how parents discuss marriage with their children.
As a father of eight who has been married for 22 years, he said many parents now emphasize independence, education and career above all else — unintentionally sending the message that personal success should come before family life.
That, he argued, has turned marriage from something people once built their adult lives around into something they pursue only after achieving success.
“Nobody’s actually independent in life,” he added. “We need to help our young people know healthy ways to discern who to depend on.”
While career and financial independence are valuable goals, De Gance said they don’t necessarily lead to “the greatest amounts of human happiness.”
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“There’s an overwhelming body of data now that the happiest people in this country are married people and married people with kids,” he said.
At Communio, De Gance and his team work with churches in 32 states, helping them run marriage and family outreach campaigns. He said churches, parents, and community leaders should work to correct misleading narratives, such as the often-cited claim that half of marriages end in divorce.
“There’s a lot of good news about marriage that people just don’t know, and our young people don’t know. It’s incumbent on parents, churches, and our thought-leader elite to actually get with the science and stop giving bad facts out to our young people,” he said.
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De Gance emphasized that marriage should not be entered into lightly, saying men and women should use discernment when deciding whether a partner is right for them.
“There are ways to avoid a terrible marriage. We need to teach our young people how to do that well,” he added.
De Gance’s message echoes broader research from the Institute for Family Studies on marriage and happiness, which found that a strong marriage is the top predictor of happiness for both men and women.
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