It's hard for me to provide a citation for an original idea and unique observation. I can't just point you to a study, because the idea here is a bit too complex for that. I can walk you through the reasoning process however.

All human societies throughout all of human history have had clearly defined gender roles, usually strongly connected to the religious practices of the community. Usually these roles define the occupations open to each gender, and determine how the genders are too interact.

For example, every neolithic society on Earth has certain common features. They all recognize a point in a child's life when they have become adults, and celebrate this transformation through ritual. In some societies, such as the Jewish community, a boy becomes a man by participating in a religious ceremony (bar mitzvah) and reading from the Torah. In Apache society, a boy became a man by participating in the Sun Walking ceremony, where he is hung from a rafter by hooks imbedded into his skin. In some subsarahan African societies, a boy is sent on a long march to a sacred site where his genitals are subjected to scarification rituals.

After this adulthood ritual is performed, the newly christened adults are matched up into mating pairs by various means. In some tribes there is a large dance in which men or women put themselves on display and are selected by the opposite sex, in others groups of elders come together and make choices, and some societies give children the freedom to court and select mates on their own.

In America, circa 1950, these rituals were largely secularized and stripped of religious importance, but they still existed. Children became adults when they graduate high school, and high school became an extended adulthood ritual -- with high school dances and the prom replacing old rites like the debutante ball. But things were already breaking down by that point.

Children in the modern West are in a bad state. We no longer have adulthood rites, and the confusion that results is palpable. We have children engaging in sex far too young because they are choosing to become adults long before they are ready, and other children that linger in delayed adolescence because society is failing to give them the "Time to be a grown up" signal.

There's utter confusion in our dating scene, which more and more is begin dominated by alcohol fueled lack of inhibition. We no longer teach boys how to court women, and no longer teach girls how to be courted. So nobody knows what they are doing. We have inventions like "friends with benefits" and thirteen year olds having casual sex, all because of a breakdown in social mores -- and gender roles.

We've stopped teaching children how to behave on a date, and have left them to fend for themselves -- unlike any society in history. And the results are a disaster. Ever falling marriage rates, ever soaring divorce rates, children born out of wedlock, couples that fight constantly because they have no idea what the point of relationships are.