Bachelorhood and Late Marriage: An Interactionist Interpretation*

This paper summarizes an exploratory investigation of the interactional careers of forty bachelors (men who had reached the age of 35 without marrying), twenty of whom later married. Depth interviewing was used to collect life history data establishing major career lines of specific heterosexual dyads as well as developments in preceding and paralleling universes of interaction. The findings support the contention that continuing social pressures rather than personal abnormalities of individual bachelors ultimately determine marital careers in that bachelorhood and late marriage are interactional products stemming from differential socialization and situational contingencies.