Today, there is much more social pressure to be stable before marriage and kids. You are supposed to have good jobs and savings and be secure. In previous generation, at least based what older relatives told about, there was pressure to marry, full stop.

Also, in even older generation, marriage was needed for financial security of the woman - the pay gap was large even when she worked and had good job for a woman. So women were under financial pressure to marry in addition to social one.

Plus, unmarried males were seen as immature or irresponsible. A guy was more likely to get pay raise or promotion explicitly with the "he needs money to feed family" thinking. So guys were motivate to marry because of subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination.