On Thursday, I wrote about a Pew Research Center study showing that the median age at first marriage is about six years higher today than it was in 1960, for both sexes.

But Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reminds us that using 1960 as a reference point can be misleading.

In 1960, the median age of first marriage was near a record low, having bottomed in about 1956. If you check out the trends going back to 1890, however, you get a much different picture:

Source: Census Bureau

“[T]he 1950s,” Professor Cohen writes, “doesn’t represent the ‘traditional’ family.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=aa2e8fd3d95dd73d7131f3d44defe980