Explain why young adults in the United States get married.

Answers will vary. Marriage meets many personal and cultural needs. For traditionalists, marriage legitimizes sexual relations. Marriage provides an institution in which children can be supported and socialized. Marriage (theoretically) restricts sexual relations so that a man can be assured-or assume-that his wife's children are his. Unless one has signed a prenuptial agreement to the contrary, marriage permits the orderly transmission of wealth from one family to another and one generation to another. Today, because more people believe that premarital sex is acceptable between two people who feel affectionate toward each other, the desire for sex is less likely to motivate marriage. But marriage provides a sense of security and opportunities to share feelings, experiences, and ideas with someone with whom one forms a special attachment. Most young adults agree that marriage is important for people who plan to spend the rest of their lives together. Broadly speaking, many people in the United States today want to get married because they believe that they will be happier. The National Marriage Project suggests that most of them are correct, even if the percentages of those reporting that their marriages are "very happy" have declined since the 1970s.