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.
I know a couple of Navy retirees who were stationed on Okinawa and ended up marrying Japanese ladies.
The wives dote on their husbands, the husbands lap up the attention and both husbands and wives are well satisfied.
Oh definitely “therapists” are a huge part of the problem. No values other than “self-actualization” which is a bankrupt ideology.
And for further reading, recommend Proverbs 31 to them,
and tell them THAT is whom “all the good men” have married.
The funny thing is that both the “American women suck” and the “American men suck” leave out the most important reasons why American men and American Women become unattractive to the opposite sex. That tells us something important.
(That doesn´t mean that the lists don´t contain a lot of truth, of course)
Touche, Mamzelle!
Something was missing.....we all know what that is code for.
They need a man like a fish needs a bike, but if you insist, he better be hung like a moose.
I like your post and points. To add to Mona’s sociological point...
We’ve suffered the impact of decades of gubmint $$$ being REWARDED to single mom.
More kids without fathers present? (except when the welfare checks come in, THEN they’ll come sniffin around!)
More $$$ for the mom.
Gubmint REWARDS promiscuity. It’s a generational INDUSTRY.
Way wrong. I payed attention to the baseball playoff crowds this year watching for that same indications. Your premise is false .
Men and women, speaking generally, are equally shallow.
Men judge women primarily by their looks.
Women judge men primarily by their status, which in this country is determined by their wallet, for the most part.
Neither characteristic says much about the value of the human being. Those who judge in such ways sort of deserve each other.
Beta guy + fat chick can be successful insofar as it will be more sustainable than beta guy + thin chick or alpha guy + fat chick. But that doesn´t mean that it will result in a truly happy couple.
Also, note that the “Alpha” vs. “Beta” distinction in men is largely internal, a matter of outlook and behavior.
Vannevar Bush - As We May Think - 1945
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/3881/
He lays out the concept of hyperlinks 50 years before the WWW. (I make all my computer intro students read this)
But, outside of this article, I can't think of anything else from The Atlantic I even remember reading.
Men marry to get sex, now they don’t need to. Why buy the cow, etc. A predictable result of slut culture.
That describes my take on relationships exactly. I would describe myself as a Beta in looks but an Alpha in attitude. I knew while still rather young that I wasn't particularly handsome .. being comparatively short at 5'6", balding in 9th grade, very thick glasses .. but I worked on being outgoing, self-reliant, witty, smart, and fun to be with. I knew that I would never be able to make a relationship connection with the class beauties and, instead, looked for matching attitudes and abilities in the young women around me. (Although I do regret never asking out my particular dream girl, Susan Shelley, even just to have her turn me down.)
“I suppose ... but they could move South”
Too much of that already! Ya’ll just stay up in the frigid north. (Exceptin’ maybe you sweet Mainiacs. The only northern girls I’ve ever known to show spunk!)
Nah, that´s not it. Like I said above “loyalty” and “kindness” in excessive amounts in a male are actively off-putting to women. It makes men look desperate and weak, respectively. And women really, really don´t like desperate and weak men. Women want men who aren´t overly clingy and who act in an assertive manner.
See how ingrained that usage is? A lot of men believe that, and then a lot of women believe, on their side, that the "winners" are those who can get the cads and players to have sex with them.
And then everyone blames someone else for a situation that they are unable to understand is based in error and corruption from the very first point.
The weather would be enough to make me miserable ;-).
“Women judge men primarily by their status, which in this country is determined by their wallet, for the most part.”
Cash helps, but the overwhelmingly most important aspect is how the man *acts*. A man who acts in a manly fashion will have a huge leg up even on a wealthy man who conducts himself as a weak man.
Oh, you mean the Masonic Jacobin pagans, themselves an offshoot of the Frankist illuminati, heirs to Sabbatai Tzvi. Antelman puts the nexus there, but even the Templars were into some pretty weird stuff.
Evil is evil. It's been with humanity a very long time.
I put the demarcation with the Gramsci and the Frankfurt School because they were the crew that installed his formally communist ideology in the American university culture.
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