To marry or not to marry?

With the institution of marriage officially on the rocks, less of us are saying "I do". So are you hankering for that diamond ring? Or does the thought of getting hitched to the same person for the rest of your life chill your blood?

A big fuss was made when statistics exposed that a high percentage of us were shunning marriage to frolic around as proud singletons. (What would our mothers think!) After all it was only twenty-five years ago that people like us didn't exist, statistically speaking. Back then the median age for getting married was 24. Today it's increased to 29.

A quick straw-poll of my twentysomething friends over dinner on Saturday night found that none of us actually wanted to get hitched, at least not anytime soon. But what are we waiting for? And if we ever do reach the aisle, is modern marriage all it's cracked up to be?

While the thirtysomething singleton says she was brought up to believe she'd be able to juggle both a career and a man, the dream has yet to come true. "For all my achievements in my career and self development, I have never been pitied so much as I am now because I don't have a husband. My married friends tell me they'd hate to be in my 'position'." So what is the reason we're avoiding settling down? Is it because we're too busy focusing on climbing the corporate ladder? Preferring to travel the world? Confused about feministic ideals?

"During the 1990s Xers decided to postpone the age of commitment to marriage from early 20s to the late 20s," he says. "Xers grabbed with both hands the notion of sequential monogamous relationships designed to road-test partners before final selection and commitment. This simple shift in social ideology delivered a different use of time to a generation of 20-somethings. A new set of social behaviours suddenly emerged. Women chose to remain in work, longer; some chose not marry or to have children. Both men and women began the process of forming, dismantling and reforming relationships."

Salt acknowledges that for blokes (who don't have the problem of the ticking biological clock), not being tied to marriage, mortgage and children by the age of 25 allows them to discover a whole new set past-times - like extreme sports. "The notion of extreme sports did not occur to baby boomer men because the time and funds required for these self-indulgent idylls were always going to be better invested in the development of a home and/or family."

So will getting hitched ever come back into Vogue? Or will we eschew the tradition altogether?
Is marriage still high on our agenda? Or are we ditching the institution?