(6) The higher standards of living and comfort which have come with the growth of our industrial civilization, especially of our cities, must also be set down as a cause of increasing instability of the family. High standards of living are, of course, desirable if they can be realized, that is, if they are reasonable. But many elements of our population have standards of living and comfort which they find are practically impossible to realize with the income which they have. Many classes, in other words, are unable to meet the social demands which they suppose they must meet in order to maintain a home. To found and maintain a home, therefore, with these rising standards of living, and also within the last decade or two with the rising cost of living, requires such a large income that an increasingly smaller proportion of the population are able to do this satisfactorily. From this cause, undoubtedly, a great deal of domestic misery and unhappiness results, which finally shows itself in desertion or in the divorce court. It is evident that higher standards of taste and higher standards of morality may also operate under certain circumstances to render the family life unstable in a similar way. (7) Directly connected with these last mentioned causes is another cause,--the higher age of marriage. Some have thought that a low age of marriage was more prolific in divorces than a relatively high age of marriage. But a low age of marriage cannot be a cause of the increase of divorce in the United States, because the proportion of immature marriages in this country is steadily lessening, that is, the age of marriage is steadily increasing, and all must admit that along with the higher age of marriage has gone increasing divorce; and there may possibly be some connection between the two facts. As we have already seen, the higher standards of living make later marriage necessary. Men in the professions do not think of marriage nowadays until thirty, or until they have an independent income. Now, how may the higher age of marriage possibly increase the instability of the family? It may do so in this way. After thirty, psychologists tell us, one's habits are relatively fixed and hard to change. People who marry after thirty, therefore, usually find greater difficulty in adjusting themselves to each other than people who marry somewhat younger; and every marriage necessarily involves an adjustment of individuals to each other. This being so, we can readily understand that late marriages are more apt to result in faulty adjustments in the family relation than marriages that take place in early maturity.