I remember when Newsweek magazine reported that women were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than married after the age of 40. Now that I’ve officially crossed that line, I can finally stop reading magazine articles about how to catch a man. But, unfortunately, that also means I shouldn’t take that trip to Beirut I’ve always dreamt about.
Translation: I don’t care for sensationalistic headlines. Neither do a lot of women, even though they consume a heavy dose of headlines about their dire plight every day.
This time, the news is about how 51 percent of American women don’t have a spouse. Unattached women are now in the majority, and marriage is, perhaps, a thing of the past. According to Cosmopolitan Magazine, and nearly every other woman’s magazine, women are supposed to care. They’re expected to read article upon article about how to keep a man, seduce a man, and have sex with a man. And if they aren’t sure about what to do with a man, there’s always a quiz to find out more about how you feel in relationship to a man.
It’s really unfortunate that single women are stereotyped as cat-owning lonely hearts, dependent on the Oxygen channel as their only defense against utter despair . Because, well, this just isn’t true anymore. A recent AARP poll of more than 2,500 women ages 45 and older found that these single women aren’t unhappy or even concerned about finding a mate. The recent trend among younger women is to delay marriage or forgo this road entirely. And, even the recent reports covering this story note the positive spin this trend portends: Women are learning how to take care of themselves.
Being an unhappy single person has less to do with gender and marital status, than it does with finances. This isn’t something you can fix with a little romance. Especially today, since men and women are more likely to marry their intellectual and financial equal. Prince Charming isn’t in the business of rescuing damsels in distress anymore. She’ll have to find her own ride. And, it seems, she prefers it that way. Maybe now she’ll make better choices and opt for the leather interior.
By Diane Glass
It’s ironic that Diane mentions the old (and infamously inaccurate) Newsweek report about women being unlikely to find a husband after 40. Because she bases the rest of her conclusion about women being happily unmarried on a recent, equally infamous New York Times article (the one saying 51% of women are single) that has been proven so inaccurate as to deserve an editorial firing squad. I hate to bring up the “L word” (uh - that would be Liberal) but I have to presume that any other newspaper would have reprimanded reporter Sam Roberts and issued a retraction… instead of encouraging other papers to spread its misinformation.
In reality, the much-discussed dynamic of women going unmarried isn’t positive or negative: it simply isn’t true. Conservative author and talk-radio host Michael Medved dug into the NYT research, and discovered that to come up with the 51% number, the reporter counted millions of high-school teenage girls as “single women,” not to mention millions of widows and military wives whose husbands were posted overseas. The real number, according to 2005 Census Bureau data, is that 94% of women have been married at one time or another, and 79% are either currently married or widowed. (More than 40% of women over 65 are widows, not single by choice.) Honestly, the marital trend that is the most negative for women in America is the constant attack of marriage by dissenters. As I’ve said many times in this space, nearly every reputable study demonstrates that marriage as an institution — and as a place for personal commitment and intimacy — protects and enhances the lives of women and children more than any other factor.
So much so, in fact, that Diane isn’t even right about finances being the primary appeal. While married women are indeed better off financially, the nationally-representative survey I commissioned for my recent book “For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women” found that most women (married or single) would actually give up some financial security if that is what it took to get more time, intimacy and emotional commitment from their husbands or boyfriends. In other words, most women really do want Prince Charming, not just his ride.
By Shaunti Feldhahn
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