Miniature graduation cap on hundred dollar bills. ..

It turns out that getting hitched, having kids, and buying a house lose some of their appeal when you're saddled with upward of $100,000 in student loans.

A recent survey of new lawyers by the American Bar Association quantifies the widespread impact that educational debt is having on the life decisions they make, from the jobs they take to whether and when they start a family. More than half of the survey respondents—56%—said they had postponed the decision to buy a house or opted to forgo buying altogether as a result of their debts. And 29% said they had either decided to postpone getting married or not get married because of debt. When it comes to having a children, 48% said their debt prompted them to delay that or decide to not have children altogether.

"Participants said heavy student loan debt is affecting virtually every aspect of their lives," reads the debt portion of the ABA's 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession, which includes data on everything from lawyer and judge demographics to the distribution of lawyers across the U.S.

The ABA's Young Lawyers Division surveyed nearly 1,100 attorneys who are in the early stages of their career to gather data on debt and the impact it has on their lives. The respondents reported a median educational debt load of $160,000—a figure that includes any debt from undergraduate degrees. The U.S. Department of Education's most recent national average debt figure for law graduates was $145,500, from 2016. The Education Department is due to release an updated figure later this year. Among all law school graduates, 71% took out educational loans in 2016, which is down from 92% in 2008.

Among the ABA survey respondents, 40% said their current debt load is actually higher than it was when they first graduated—meaning they aren't able to pay down their debt as fast as it's growing due to interest. Approximately one-quarter of the survey respondents provided open-ended responses about the shadow that educational debt has cast on their lives.

"There was an underlying theme of unhappiness, frustration and fear stemming from loan burdens," the report reads. "Many mentioned issues with mental health, and some cited depression. Others mentioned an inability to save for the future or retirement, as well as difficult choices related to healthcare for themselves or their family."

And Black and Hispanic lawyers on average have even higher educational loan burdens than their white peers—a phenomenon other researches have highlighted in recent years. About two-thirds of the Black lawyers who responded to the ABA's survey said their loan balances are higher now than when then graduated law school.

Student loan debt is also influencing the career paths of many new attorneys. Among the survey respondents, 37% said they chose a job that paid more over a job they actually wanted. And 17% said they opted for a job that qualifies for student loan forgiveness over a preferred option. (The federal government's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program forgives the remaining student loan balance for those in qualifying public service positions after 10 years.)

More than half of the survey respondents—58%—said they postponed or decided not to take a vacation because of their loan debt, while 46% said they decided not to buy a car or postponed a car purchase due to their loans.

Despite those heavy average debt burdens, legal education lands in the middle of the pack in terms of the cost of financing an advanced degree. Education Department figures show that the average law school graduate who borrows money to pay for school owes less than those who borrowed for medical school and other health science doctorates. But they tend to owe more than those with Ph.D.s in most fields.