--- title: Royal Weddings and American Marriage | TIME description: As Prince William announces his engagement to Kate Middleton, editor at large Belinda Luscombe explores marriage in America, and a Pew/TIME poll on the subject. canonical: https://time.com/video/m8RAiJxj/ og:title: Royal Weddings and American Marriage og:description: As Prince William announces his engagement to Kate Middleton, editor at large Belinda Luscombe explores marriage in America, and a Pew/TIME poll on the subject. og:url: https://time.com/video/m8RAiJxj/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/m8RAiJxj/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Royal Weddings and American Marriage twitter:description: As Prince William announces his engagement to Kate Middleton, editor at large Belinda Luscombe explores marriage in America, and a Pew/TIME poll on the subject. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/m8RAiJxj/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Royal Weddings and American Marriage > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Royal Weddings and American Marriage [Watch (HLS stream): Royal Weddings and American Marriage](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/m8RAiJxj.m3u8) (5:03)  _Published 2010-11-18. As Prince William announces his engagement to Kate Middleton, editor at large Belinda Luscombe explores marriage in America, and a Pew/TIME poll on the subject._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:07 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Healing Through Humor : Tig Notaro \(interviewed by Belinda Luscombe\)](/video/OqtZGVmZ/) ### Healing Through Humor : Tig Notaro (interviewed by Belinda Luscombe) [Know Right Now: Poll Finds Support for Gay Marriage at All-Time High](/video/Hl35CfIB/) ### Know Right Now: Poll Finds Support for Gay Marriage at All-Time High [A Gay-Marriage Wedding Video](/video/GDilKh4r/) ### A Gay-Marriage Wedding Video --- ## Transcript >> So from the splendor of the Cathedral, out into the sunshine and to the crowds waiting to welcome the Prince and Princess of Wales. >> If you remember, the Royal wedding of the last century, the 1981 with Princess Diana and Prince Charles. >> And from the West Door in St. Paul's Cathedral, their families were there to see the [ unk ]. >> Huge affair ended so badly. That marriage was almost the worst marriage of the century. Divorce, scandal, cheating, death, marvelous boys, worldwide weeping-- you know, because largely, the Prince was in his 30's, the Princess was 19 when they got married. They didn't really know each other. In this marriage, Kate and William have known each other for eight or nine years. They've pretty much would have been living together. They both met at college. They went to the same university. In fact, Kate will be the first British monarch or member of the Royal family as high as she's got who has a degree who was then-- who has been to-- who was graduated from University. Although, she and William are not really equal, there is equal as, you know, you can get really in some ways to a King. She's not wealthy like he is but it's much more a marriage of equals and that's much more what marriage looks like these days, especially when marriage is a base of they are now on love as opposed to on duty, which is what their parents marriage was based on. You'd have to be blind not to say that marriage has undergone huge, huge drop of changes for a decades now since the 60's and particularly even since the 80's and the rise of the knowledge economy and the invention of the computer. All these things have really affected marriage. So what we at TIME wanted to do with the people at Pew, who are also fantastic at the stuff was really dig down deep into American attitudes about marriage and the family and see how they changed and see what people were feeling at this point and time. It just so happens it happens to be another Royal wedding, so that gives us an excuse. People still clearly think that in order to be ready for marriage, you need to be able to provide for family. They think this more about men than they do about women, but it's changing. About 67 percent of people think that men need to be in a financially good position before-- in order to be a good husband material, but 33 percent of people also think that women need to be in a good financial position in order to get married. That's higher than it used to be. Interestingly, fewer women than 67 percent think that about men and more women think that about themselves. So women are easier on the men in terms of financial and harder on themselves. One of the other surprising things about the poll that I think is actually kind of sweet is that about 40 percent of Americans currently think that the institution of marriage is becoming obsolete. More women think this than men. It tends to be that married people think it less than unmarried people, which is not surprising. And about 44 percent of people who are under the age of 30 think that the institution of marriage is gonna-- is on its way to extinction. It's an endangered species. Yet, the same people that you ask, those same under, you know, under 30 year olds, only 5 percent of those people said they personally do not want to get married. So it's an institution that apparently has becoming extinct, but they themselves believe that they will get married. If you get married after the age of 26 and you have a college degree and your spouse is older than 26 and has a college degree, you're much less likely to get divorced than if you get married younger than that, or if you marry and you haven't finished college or you haven't been to college. The divorce right among college educated people who marry up 26 is actually dropping. Many young people choose to live together before they get married. Actually, the study showed that that does not improve your chances of having a happy marriage. So far, the study seemed to suggest that people who live together before marriage and people who don't have about the same chance of divorce. About a quarter of Americans believe that there's just one person that you could possibly marry in the whole world, which seems to me to be impossible. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Royal Weddings and American Marriage","description":"As Prince William announces his engagement to Kate Middleton, editor at large Belinda Luscombe explores marriage in America, and a Pew/TIME poll on the subject.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/m8RAiJxj/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-11-18T19:34:05.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/m8RAiJxj.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/m8RAiJxj/","duration":"PT5M3S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/m8RAiJxj/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```