But again, the data suggests something slightly more complicated: In a 2013 Gallup poll, 75 percent of respondents were either married or said they wanted to be married. This included 84 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds; only nine percent of Millennials in that poll said they never wanted to get hitched. How can both sets of poll findings be true?

It probably has something to do with the curious way the question was worded in the Pew survey, which asked people to choose from the following two statements:

"Society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority."

or

"Society is just as well off if people have priorities other than marriage and children."

The second option seems to leave a lot of room for interpretation. If you think it's okay to want a career plus marriage and kids, you might plausibly end up in that category, even if you think family values are important.

But it's also possible that the poll results say something about American judge-y-ness. People may want an Instagram feed full of adorable babies for their own lives, but they don't necessarily think society will end if other people don't want the same thing. It's also possible that this says something about the somewhat-taboo nature of evangelizing family values on the left—particularly among liberal-leaning Millennials, it may seem unacceptable to suggest that people, and especially women, need to find husbands and birth children in order to do their part for society.

The only firm conclusion is this: People clearly aren't buying the argument conservative sociologists from Robert Putnam to Brad Wilcox have been making for years, that marriage is essential for thriving communities. Society, people seem to think, will be just fine without it.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.