Posted on 01/23/2007 7:11:06 AM PST by shrinkermd
THE news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures.
But consider, too, the flip side: about half of all men find themselves in the same situation. As the number of people marrying has dropped off in the last 45 years, the marriage rate has declined equally for men and for women.
The stereotype has been cemented in the popular culture: the hard-charging career girl who gets her comeuppance, either violently or dying a slow death by late-night memo and Chinese takeout...
But when it comes to marriage, the two Americas aren’t divided by gender. And it’s not the career girls on the losing end. It’s their less educated manicurists or housekeepers, women who might arguably be less able to live on their own.
The emerging gulf is instead one of class — what demographers, sociologists and those who study the often depressing statistics about the wedded state call a “marriage gap” between the well-off and the less so.
Statistics show that college educated women are more likely to marry than non-college educated women — although they marry, on average, two years later.
Women with more education also are becoming less likely to divorce, or inclined to divorce, than those with less education. They are even less likely to be widowed all in all, less likely to end up alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Bullshit from a self-hating boomer. Anybody with even the slightest knowledge of Roe v. Wade knows that there were zero boomers on the court and zero boomers arguing the case or writing the laws.
As for no-fault divorce it was started in California by Reagan in 1969 when the oldest boomer was all f 23 and most were in Jr. HS.
"No-fault" divorce was pioneered in the United States by the state of California with the passage of the Family Law Act of 1969. The Act was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on September 4, 1969[6], and it took effect on January 1, 1970. It abolished the old common law action for divorce and replaced it with the proceeding for dissolution of marriage on the grounds of "irreconciliable differences."
Your addition of no-fault insurance in this topic is just silly.
That's a sad commentary. I hope you spend as much time making it work as you spend making sure it's painless if it fails.
I think that alot of women are mad at the fact that alot of men still have that old idea that woman are beneath them. That women are around to cook, clean, errands, etc. Remember...the old school books used to tell women to actually get up earlier than your husband....to fix yourself up so you look pretty before he sees you and to get breakfast started. That makes me ill.
I agree, but you forgot one..."I want it all...and I want it
hollywood has it's hand in helping to create a generation(or 2)of degenerates and ingrates.
Just watched a good program(rarity)about the Roman empire, the similarities are astounding, and we all know how that ended u'..... oh wait, public education, never mind.
4. They're 'happy'.....
Yet one wonders why this article was written to say that more women are single than married? Why the focus on women, specifically? What are they trying to imply?
I just assumed that it's because men are so undesirable. As a man, I've gotten so used to the anti-male bias that I expect an article to so slanted. Back to your question, it seems to be trying to encourage women to avoid marriage. It could be an attempt to recruit more single women or simply comfort their own insecurities.
Carins are wonderful!
There could be a lack of males out there too. We have one at home at 25, no job, looking, but spends more hours in his room playing video games than seriously finding a job. We live in FL so its not easy for a 24 yr. old computer oriented wiz kid to find something suitable. He has no social activities thus he also lacks the exposure.
The Three Bimbos of The Apocolypse
Happy? Not really. More frustrated than anything.
Been there, doing that.
Hmmm….. I’m not sure I can accept that either. The correct answer is that there are as many answers/reasons as there are unmarried. Generalization and blanket statements are what are ignorant, not people. But while we are making generalizations here, I’ll give mine.
1. Self-centeredness
2. Financial independence
Without getting too personal, I will accept the self-centeredness reason. I see it better to be self-centered and single vs. self-centered and married. I see my faults and accept them. I do not want anyone else to suffer because of them.
Pardon me now, I have to get back to hating myself!
You remind me of couples I know who have it all figured out... they divide the bills between them, and he pays "his" bills and she pays "her" bills and the rest of the money is theirs as they want. I can imagine how much potential for fighting and stress that sort of thing adds. If my husband had suggested a prenup before we got married I'd have looked at him like he had two heads. But our religious beliefs and personal backgrouns mean that we don't see divorce as an option, ever.
Do you remind your wife regularly that it's your house and you just let her live there? Don't you work together in your marriage to build your life together, including house and cars and stuff? It seems sort of sad if you don't.
More like:
Actually, it's more that while both men and women pay an emotional price for a marriage gone wrong, for men it's also a long term financial meltdown.
All being married means is that you could have to pay for a few glasses of milch for decades...
I'll give you the same advice I give my daughter...
1. Honestly study yourself without judgment. (If you tend to be bossy, take a note of that. If you tend to be clingy, take a note of that.)
2. Figure out what type of woman would be the most compatible with you. (If you are the romantic type, you won't do well with an independent woman.)
3. Make a list (using your prior analysis of yourself and wisdom gleaned from experience) that has 2 columns. In the first column you write "MUSTS". In the second column write ""NOTS". BE SPECIFIC. (Yes, I even include the physical here, but [for me] I tried not to be *too* specific to keep the field as open as possible. Mine said, "Bigger than me. Not skinny.")
4. Keep your list with you. Date as much as possible. After every date, go back to the list and see if your date fit the bill. You'll find out more about them the more you date them.
This is how I identified my husband at 19. I dated like crazy for about three months. Some of the guys lasted about two weeks before I found out they had something on my "not" list and dumped them. I was skeptical of my husband, but happily surprised when, after our second month, I found that he fit the bill hand-in-glove.
I spent the next 7 months trying to convince *him* that I was what he'd been looking for! LOL!
How does love fit in here? Well, I found that it's easy to love someone you get along with and respect. If I hadn't been attracted to him, we never would've had a second date. (Yes, attraction was on my list.)
But, had it not been for this list, I never would've "seen" him for what he was. This guy is really scary. He's the large, leather-clad, growling, quiet type who frightens small children, cats and "good" girls. He cusses like a soldier which makes him appear unintelligent, but he's actually the most intelligent man I've ever known... which I found out after I actually engaged him in conversation and forced him to talk! (I tease that I was attracted to his *sigh* HUGE vocabulary! LOL!)
So... you're going to shop intelligently, with logic and with the resolve that you won't settle. I decided when I made my list that I'd rather be alone than with the wrong person. I was the product of multiple divorces in childhood and that I didn't want that for my children. (In many ways, I was looking for a father for my kids as well as a husband for myself.)
And you're going to break your own heart a LOT along the way. You'll find someone who is *perfect* in every way but one. One important way. And you'll end it. And you'll hurt, but know you've done the right thing and move on.
*That* is how to choose a mate. One word of warning. If the list isn't honest and realistic, the whole plan falls apart before it gets off the ground.
"We were once a tough nation, we are now a country comprised of pussies who can rationalize any action - so long as we benefit, and everyone else be damned."
'Kin A!
We have truly become a nation of Lanny Davises and Rahm Emmanuels...uberpussies. The kinds of guys, who used to get routinely pounded in High School for being whiners...by guys who smoked and took shop classes...
Think about it: We are a a Nation where a Black Actor on Grays Anatomy, can be FORCED to go meet the Gays because he might or might have tossed the word 'fag' into a conversation. Isiah Washington should have decked Patrick Dempsey...
Often I thinking of packing up the family and moving to Australia...the last haven of manliness...on this planet...
My answer was to the poster who thought that people who weren't married were selfish.....
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