The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony by Pamela Paul.

http://www.startermarriages.com/ says:

• Are you under 35 and divorced without children?

[I sure am. -Renaissance]

• Are you newly married and worried that your union might not last?
• Are you engaged and getting "cold feet"?

Nobody plans to have a starter marriage - one that lasts for 5 years or less, and ends before children begin. Unlike a starter home, nobody goes into a marriage expecting to divorce and trade up to something better. But like a starter home, once you leave your first marriage, you learn what to look for, and what to avoid, the next time around. Most people who have starter marriages would like to marry again - for a lifetime.

[That sounds about right... though I think I will be waiting a while before diving back into that lifestyle. -Renaissance]

The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony is a pioneering study of first marriages lasting five years or less and ending without children, and of the changing face of matrimony in America. According to the brilliant trend analyst and journalist Pamela Paul, "It's easy to conclude that the starter marriage trend bodes ill for the state of marriage. After all, we're getting married, screwing it up, and divorcing-a practice that certainly isn't strengthening our sense of trust, family, or commitment.

[There is truth in that... it is hard to trust again after a bad breakup... it is tough to be sure about wanting a family after the first attempt fails. Commitment... well, that's not so tough, but putting that commitment down on paper again is not such an easy concept to come to terms with. -Renaissance]

But though starter marriages seem like a grim prospect, there is also an upside. For one thing, if people are going to divorce, better to do so after a brief marriage in which no children suffer the consequences." [So true. -Renaissance] But are there other consequences of starter marriages? And what causes these marriages to fail in the first place?

In today's matrimania culture, weddings, marriage, and family are clearly goals to which most young Americans aspire. Why are today's twenty- and thirtysomethings-the first children-of-divorce generation-so eager to get married, and so prone to failure? Are Americans today destined to jump in and out of marriage? At a time when marriage at age twenty-five can mean a sixty-year active commitment, could "serial marriages" be the wave of the future? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with starter marriage veterans and on exhaustive re-search, Pamela Paul explores these questions, putting the issues into social and cultural perspective. She looks at the hopes and motivations of couples marrying today, and examines the conflict between our cultural conception of marriage and the society surrounding it. Most important, this lively and engaging narrative examines what the starter marriage trend means for the future of matrimony in this country-how and why we'll continue to marry in the twenty-first century.

I think I am going to have to check this book out.