​Anca Cismașu is more than 30 years old, and she drives her parents to despair because she does not want to get married. They would like a nephew or niece to take care of them, but Anka doesn’t even want to hear it. “I’m just now getting back on my feet, wait another 3-4 years until I save a dime and I’ll think about marriage too,” she told her parents on Wednesday during their weekly call.

Anka comes from Transylvania and came to the capital because she earns better here and to escape from her parents, who forced her to marry from the age of 23. She was an accountant in a car dealership until she opened her own business in a completely different field: creating advertising.

Anka is not an isolated case. Between 1990 and 2022, the age of marriage for Romanian women was advanced by more than 6 years, with large differences between counties. In the capital, growth has been going on for almost 9 years, and in Suceava – 4.5 years.

See below how the age of a married man has changed over the past 32 years

Romania has changed tremendously in the last 30 years, and some of these changes may explain why women are delaying marriage. Some of the reasons are social, and others are economic.

1. Women’s wages are growing faster than their male counterparts

HotNews looked at public data on women’s wages by age group, and the results are somewhat surprising. Women have a higher rate of wage growth than men of the same age group.

There is a faster salary emancipation (if you can call it that). And since their wages grow more dynamically compared to men’s, they become less economically dependent on men, without being forced to invest their pirost in order to survive more easily.

The same is the case in the 25-29 and 30-34 age groups, which we carefully considered.

Our observations coincide withresearch results which estimates that up to 20% of the decline in the number of marriages in the United States over the past 30 years is due to higher wages for women.

More precisely, the increase in women’s wages relative to their potential partners and the growing importance of women’s wages in total household income contributed to the decision to delay or even abandon marriage.

The fact is that for many women, especially those who were earning the economic minimum wage, the fact that they are now earning more allows them to be less financially dependent on their partners for rent, food or utilities.

This means that the choice of marriage does not depend on financial needs, but more on other things, such as love, social norms, religion or the desire to start a family.

2. Women, as a rule, are better educated

Net enrollment in post-secondary and higher education is steadily increasing.

According to statistics used by HotNews, in higher education, the majority of the school population is female (71.2%).

Also, if we look at the other end of the Education rankings, the dropout rate, meaning girls are doing much better than boys, in some places the rates are half as low.

3. It’s personal freedom that counts, right?

Some women decide to postpone marriage in order to travel, focus on their own passions and postpone the moment of “putting on the pyrostras”. The responsibilities of having a husband or taking care of the whole family can push women away from such serious commitments.

Therefore, women who decide to marry later in life can use their time to devote themselves to their own projects or to try to solve certain problems before they get married.

4. Career comes first…

Women who delay marriage due to professional dynamics sometimes find it difficult to find a stable and reliable partner. They emphasize professional performance and want a man who is at least as ambitious. Psychologist Jeremy Nicholson wrote in Psychology Today that it is difficult for women today to find suitable partners because society expects women to be leaders both at work and at home, and high standards often prevent them from finding a suitable partner.

5. Cohabitation as a compatibility test

Marriage is delayed when women decide to live with their partner before or without marriage. Couples choose to live together for many reasons: to pool resources, to test marriage compatibility, or to confirm that cohabitation is what they want and marriage will become natural. There is much debate in the literature (and inherited cultural baggage) about whether cohabitation harms marriage, but regardless of what the research says, more and more women are choosing to live with their partners without formalizing the relationship. , but rather confirm it or, on the contrary, invalidate it.

There are, of course, other arguments: modern parents encourage their children to be independent, not to a “profitable” marriage. In addition, one can discuss the consequences of urbanization and access to global information resources, the fear of commitment, which has influenced the younger generation to postpone marriage until they are very sure of their choice. Also, the topic of discussion can be the development of science and medicine, which can now “regulate” the biological clock with solutions such as IVF or surrogate motherhood.

It is certain that Anka Chimasu is still waiting for her to make the right decision, and this makes both of her parents extremely unhappy.