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 ...
True, and true of both genders.
Exactly. Anyone with real concerns about the long term viability of their marriage needs to take two steps back and think. Heck anyone thinking about getting married needs to do that just to be sure it is right.
I did not let myself get emotionally invested to any significant degree until I was 99.999% sure she was the right one for all time.
****Actually, it's more that while women pay an emotional price for a marriage gone wrong, for men it's a financial meltdown.****
Actually I was emotionally crushed when the woman I loved decided that she didn't want to be married anymore. I didn't date again for years and when I started again I couldn't beleive how absolutly toxic and emotionally screwed up most of the women I met were. I stopped trying a couple of years ago (I'm in my mid-30s) and have decided to just enjoy the little pleasures in life.
>> the marriage rate has declined equally for men and for women.
Wow!
The slide of America into moral degeneracy was well underway well before the Beatles landed at JFK Airport in New York, or Mario Savio led the "Free Speech Movement" at Berkeley.
the stat included 15 year old girls AND
80 + year old women.
My suicide rate would have been 100% if I hadn't gotten divorced.
Bah, don't you know men are irrelevant to raising a healthy dog and single women can do just as good a job. I guess I will have to stay married to you after all.
An excellent point. Conventional wisdom for thirty-something women on how to deal with men is a warped, bitter philosophy with all the mercy of a Chinese warlord. I know a lot of guys and gals who were absolutely devastated by their divorce, and left as emotional wrecks for years. Eventually, the men got over it and were ready to try again.
With women, however, the damage seems permanent, and cumulative. Bitterness and anger drives a lot of women into a state they don't recover from. A bad break for them, and a bad break for guys looking to start over.
Issac Asimov once said that going into a career in writing was like getting married. Anyone who could be talked out of it should be!
Makes sense. It is not that we really want fewer people married but if it is possible for them to get talked out of it then they were not serious enough in the first place.
Oh no! My wife got me into writing... this can't be good...
LOL!
It was the long hair, I tell ya!
This is one of the most poorly-written articles I have ever read. It's almost as if English is a second language to the writer.
Actually, the suicide rate for divorced men is 10X that of divorced women whearas it is normally only a 2X gender difference.
What you're responding to isn't my writing. I agree with you on the emotional price men pay in divorce. This meshes well with the fact that %70 of divorces are initiated by women.
No those are not real precentages. I am just using them to show why the 'of all marriages' is a worthless statistic.
Good point. Those statistics are worthless but useful if you are trying to destigmatize divorce.
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