This is NOT my don-o, but the age-range is right, and you get the idea!
Posted on 10/28/2011 5:09:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Kate Bolick stares out at the world from the cover of The Atlantic magazine. She's wearing a black lace evening dress. "What, Me Marry?" asks the headline. She isn't smiling.
In fact, she isn't smiling in any of the photos that accompany her several thousand-word essay on singleness, marriage and the changing nature of dating and mating in America today. Bolick, 38, is groping toward accepting the idea that she may never marry. She badly wants to convince herself -- and us -- that older ideas about "unhappy" spinsters are silly cultural baggage best dropped off at the curb. And yet, there are those glamour shots -- Bolick behind the wheel wearing a fetching red dress; Bolick in a gold evening gown holding a glass of champagne; Bolick in a black cocktail dress -- but her expressions range from pensive to sad -- never happy.
Bolick seems genuinely conflicted about marriage. The daughter of a committed feminist, she marched off to third grade "in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE." She recalls that when she was cuddling in the back seat of the family car with her high school boyfriend, her mother turned around and asked, "Isn't it time you two started seeing other people?" She took it for granted, she writes, "that (I) would marry, and that there would always be men (I) wanted to marry."
So sure was she of the limitless romantic opportunities available that at the age of 28, she broke up with a wonderful boyfriend. They had been together for three years. He was "an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind." Why did she discard him? "Something was missing."
Ten years later, she writes somewhat (though not entirely) ruefully "If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace . . . today we're contending with a new 'dating gap,' where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players."
There is a great deal of interesting data in this piece. According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Millennials and 43 percent of Gen Xers think marriage is becoming obsolete. As of 2010, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, compared with 26 percent in 1980. Women account for the lion's share of bachelors and masters degrees, and make up a majority of the work force. Three quarters of the jobs lost during the recession were lost by men. "One recent study found a 40 percent increase in the number of men who are shorter than their wives." Fully 50 percent of the adult population is single, compared with 33 percent in 1950.
But these trends, however interesting, shed only an oblique light on the problem of the decline in marriageable males. Bolick edges closer to the truth in her discussion of sex.
"The early 1990s," she writes, "witnessed the dawn of the '"hookup culture"' at universities, as colleges stopped acting in loco parentis (actually they relinquished that role in the 1970s) and undergraduates . . . started throwing themselves into a frenzy of one-night-stands." Some young women, she notes, felt "forced into a promiscuity they didn't ask for," whereas young men "couldn't be happier."
According to economist Robert H. Frank, "when available women significantly outnumber men . . . courtship behavior changes in the direction of what men want." And vice versa. If there's a shortage of women, the females have more power to demand what they want, which tends to be (surprise!) monogamy. On college campuses, women outnumber men by 57 to 43 percent.
But economic analysis can take you only so far. Men's capacity to insist upon promiscuity rests completely on female cooperation. And women have been foolishly compliant for decades.
They've conspired in their own disempowerment, not because they love their sexual freedom (though a few may), but because people like Gloria Steinem and Ms. Bolick's mother convinced them that the old sexual mores, along with marriage and children, were oppressive to women.
The resulting decline of marriage has been a disaster for children, a deep disappointment to reluctantly single women and unhealthy for single men, who are less happy, shorter-lived and less wealthy than married men. The sexual revolution has left a trail of destruction in its wake, even when its victims don't recognize the perpetrator.
+1. works like a charm. Doesn’t mean being a jerk, but not being so eager to please every little whim.
No kidding!! Marriage has, to a certain extent, really developed my ability to act. :)
Nope. Maybe a little exxageration, though.
It took me a long time to learn, but seriously, most things are not really worth arguing about, except to a woman. Regardless of your intentions, you’ve hurt her feelings. Man up, take the blame, and move on.
I don’t recommend this for truly important stuff, like a matter of right and wrong. But here’s the thing. If a woman realizes that you care about her, 1) she finds much fewer things to pick an argument with you about, and 2) she is much more inclined to let you have YOUR way.
Yes, both have to feel that way.
Two words of advice. One, take your time selecting your mate. Spend a year or two, not a month or two, together.
Two. Mariage is WORK. So work at it.
Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, it looks like we are on the same page here.
I wonder if she’s supposed to represent the “complete package”. I used to hear a lot of that back in the ‘90’s. I used to think, “Yeah, but it should be wrapped in a strait jacket!”.
A-freaking-men. Two works I never heard my ex-wife say in over 10 years of marriage was "I'm sorry". It's a key indicator IMO.
There's a widespread misconception that nobody had sex before Hefner and hippies invented sex in 1967, or if they did, they didn't enjoy it. My late mother and mother-in-law used to laugh at this notion and get a far-away look in their eyes.
Its almost like "feminism" was the "trojan" horse for men to get everything they want:....constant access to porn and promicuous "no strings attached" sexual encounters..
You nailed it. This is why Hefner always supported contraception and abortion, as feminists do.
We are besieged by evil. Because America has been such a force for good, the devil attacks us.
Great article.
This is NOT my don-o, but the age-range is right, and you get the idea!
Women have been doing that to people like you son forever. I know, I was just like him and I watched women time and again go after the losers and bastards and then come crying to me.
Later I found the right woman and married at 26 to a woman who was 31. Been married for 23 years now.
They were screwed by the Feminists, the first of whom were .... wait for it .... Communists.
Go on, search on "Betty Friedan" and "Communist". She didn't leave college to follow some guy -- she left to come to work editing a Communist daily. The Party needed her, and she answered the call gladly.
Draw a circle. Mark out one-quarter of the circle, and label it "minorities". Take the remaining three-quarters, and divide it in two. Mark one "Male" and the other "Wimyn". Now mark "Male = Main Enemy". That's what the Communists did. That was their takedown plan for America.
So, how're they doing, courtesy of Miss Friedan?
You forgot a couple of modifiers. It has always been "open season" -- for guys who play quarterback, look like Adonis (or at least Charles Atlas or Gregory Peck or Christian Slater or George Clooney or Fabio), who drive around in AMG's and Porsche Turbos with wads of $100 bills sticking out both pockets, and who dress like the ads in Details and GQ.
Thanks and congrats! We’ve been married for 33+.
Men's window slams shut at 39-1/2 years old, precisely. Women can gauge a man's age very exactly and have uncannily accurate radar about this age factor.
A guy at 40 can bench-press the same weight he did at 37, weigh the same, look the same, have better income -- and still his "point" value as a potential mate plummets overnight. If he was a 6, now he's a 2 or a 3. If he was an 8, now he's maybe a four or a five. If he was a 5 before ..... well, it's been nice knowing you. Take up hunting or something.
This according to Jay Leno's autobiography, and he says he got it from the bartenders he used to talk to before he went onstage at all those East Coast clubs he worked back in the 60's and 70's. Of course, those barmen were drawing on five or six centuries of public-house wisdom. Leno calls it "The Rule of 39 and a Half".
Well, Stanford didn't think much of that homespun barroom wisdom, so they set up a rigorous, peer-reviewed sociological study to see whether this was true (speaking only of women now). And guess what -- Leno and the barkeepers were exactly right, in every detail. It only cost Stanford about $300,000 to work it out their way.
But thanks for the backup work, guys.
Ha! That is a great post.
Young Southern women are getting the feminazi infection as well.
The post I put up was from online. I didn’t wrote it. I did, however, marry someone from outside the US and am very happy. Took me recognizing the problem was the anti-family values of our society had made it nearly impossible to find quality women here.
Women in their 20s in the US are focused on careers. They start thinking about marriage around 30. By then they have slept around and are looking for Mr. Perfect. Good luck!
Thank you.
I recognized the problem but kept looking anyway, concentrating on my relatively conservative part of the country to keep me straight. Got a couple of looks in my 30's, after I was sufficiently secure financially and careerwise to think about it seriously, but that was it. No dice. Guess my heart wasn't in it, or I was too committed to my career.
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