Philadelphia ? Want to know why men won’t commit?

Your mother could probably have told you.

The No. 1 reason, according to some Rutgers University researchers, is that it’s easy to get sex without marriage these days.

Of course, there’s slightly more to it than that. The young men interviewed by the National Marriage Project were also afraid of divorce particularly its financial consequences and they were reluctant to make the changes and compromises marriage entails. They experience little social pressure to marry. And they want a “soul mate” they’ve yet to meet. The men questioned, who were 25 to 33 years old, were in no hurry to have children.

The study released Tuesday is part of a continuing exploration of marriage by the National Marriage Project, headed by sociologist David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a social historian and analyst. The two are avowedly pro-marriage. “We think it’s an important social institution, and it’s especially important for children,” Whitehead said.

To learn about young men’s attitudes about commitment, the group interviewed 60 never-married, heterosexual, employed men in northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. Most had at least some college and incomes that ranged from $21,000 to $35,000. When asked if they were men whom women would want to marry, Popenoe said, “A lot of them were, ‘yeah.”‘

These were focus groups, which Whitehead conceded are “highly unscientific.” The results of their discussions will help the Marriage Project formulate questions for a broader survey next year.

Other tidbits gleaned from the conversations that women might find interesting: Men are turned off by women who openly want children or already have them; they view women they meet in bars as casual sex partners rather than marriage material, and they’re more likely to “take it slow” with a woman they see as a potential long-term partner. (That means waiting to have sex until the fourth or fifth date.) They also want a wife who works.