larrabee@decwrl.DEC.COM (Tracy Larrabee) (02/27/86)
I found this article in the Living section of the February 25 edition of the San Jose Mercury News. I did not ask anyone's permission to type (part of) it in. The brackets show where I have left out paragraphs (through laziness only) I am not sure that I agree that conclusions based on the marriage habits of today's 35 year old professional women can be applied to today's 25 year old women 10 years hence, but it is clear that professional women are definitely spending less time in traditional roles than their ancestors. I would love to know how many of the single women are having babies anyway (I certainly agree with the article's statement that women do not need to avoid or seek marriage on the grounds of fertility alone). I must also admit a fair amount of skepticism concerning the "parametric model" mentioned towards the end of the article. I would be interested in intelligent responses (publicly or through the mail). MARRIAGE RATE DECLINES FOR WOMEN WHO DELAY By William R Greer New York Times Women who defer marriage to go to college and pursue a career are finding that by the time they decide to marry, the marriage market has evaporated, according to a new study by two Yale sociologists and a Harvard economist. College-educated white women who have not married by the time they are 25 have only a 50 percent chance of marrying, according to the unpublished study, which analyzes census data from 70,000 households. Just 20 percent of the women who reach the age of 30 without marrying can be expected to marry. Five percent of those who reach the age of 35 without marrying will marry, and for those beyond 40, "perhaps 1 percent" will marry the study showed. And in general, a lower percentage of the total population of women is marrying these days, the study showed. "I think people up until this point have suspected that well-educated women were deferring marriage," said one of the sociologists who conducted the study, Dr. Neil G. Bennet, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University. "However, it appears from this analysis that much of this marriage deferral is translating into marriage forgone." [...] Bennett said the reasons that fewer women are marrying are complex. Essentially, the study showed that many women, after deferring marriage, find that by the time they want to marry, there are fewer available men from which to choose. Those available are either not the kind of men the women want to marry, or the men prefer women who are younger, not as highly educated or not as successful. [...] These results were especially striking, Bennett said, because in most other subgroups of the population, 90 percent of the women married at some point. [...] The researchers used a mathematical device called a parametric model that, based on past and present marriage patterns, is supposed to project what proportion of the women covered by the survey would marry and at what age. The model also estimated what percentage of women would never marry. The study did not establish why women surveyed did not marry. It did not show, for example, if the women chose not to or if they could not find suitable husbands. [...] There are also fewer reasons for a woman to marry, Bloom said. Women are more financially independent. Contraception and the legality and growing acceptance of abortion have also freed women from the child-bearing function to an extent that it is unprecedented in history," he added. "Women don't have to get married to have children, and they don't have to avoid marriage in order to avoid having children." [...] The study did not examine men and their marriage patterns because, Bennett said, the Census Bureau's data supplied by men were untrustworthy. [there is a bit more] ------- Tracy Larrabee decwrl!larrabee larrabee@decwrl
falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) (02/28/86)
> > I found this article in the Living section of the February 25 edition of the > San Jose Mercury News. I did not ask anyone's permission to type (part of) > it in. The brackets show where I have left out paragraphs (through > laziness only) > >MARRIAGE RATE DECLINES FOR WOMEN WHO DELAY > >By William R Greer >New York Times > >Women who defer marriage to go to college and pursue a career are >finding that by the time they decide to marry, the marriage market has >evaporated, according to a new study by two Yale sociologists and a >Harvard economist. etc. I read that article too and didn't like it. The attitute of the writer seemed to be that it was a bad thing that women weren't getting married. The article also seemed to be threatening women "if you try to have a serious career, men won't like you -- so cut it out". In general, the tone of the article was that women wanted to get married, but following a career was stopping them. I suspect that in the real world, women with careers aren't getting married for the following reasons: 1) they have financial security -- they don't need a man to support them. The more successful a woman is, the less of an inducement to marriage is a man's income is. 2) Successful, career-oriented women are more intelligent than non-carreer-oriented women and can perceive more options in life and are less likely to swallow the indoctrination they grew up with. 3) Women who postpone marriage for a few years get more time to mature and get a better perspective on life. A decade or two without depending on a man can teach a woman that she doesn't NEED to depend on a man. That article would have been a lot more balanced if they had done just a few basic things. They should have asked these women if the regretted their choices. They should have made a distinction between "unmarried" and "lonely". I suspect that a lot of these women did not get married, not because the didn't have the option, but because they didn't want to limit their options -- i.e. they have all the male company they want (perhaps more than one lover) and don't feel that marriage would serve any purpose. They should have asked how many professional women WANT to get married. What offended me most was the first sentence of the story where the writer asserted that the "marriage market has evaporated", and then doesn't give one scrap of evidence to show that the "marriage market" is actually an issue. Why assume that all women who aren't married are trying to be. I suppose a gut reaction would be to point out that the writer of this article and all of the researchers quoted were men, but you find these attitudes in writings by women as well. Read anything by Cynthia Heimel or anything at all published in "Cosmo" and you'll get the schlock about what a crisis it is if you're 30 and not married yet. Even "MS" magazine runs something like "How to find love in the classifieds" every few issues. The other semi-feminist magazines such as "New Woman" and "Savvy" look more like "Cosmo" each time I look through an issue. In the 70's, the feminist movement was very adamant about marriage being a raw deal for women -- that women wound up losing from it (time, energy, financial status, independence) and that men wound up gaining from it. By and large, any study done on the subject has backed this belief up. I also agree, having seen the effects of marriage on several women in my life. Another thing that bothers me is that I keep reading things about how how there is a shortage of men and that the situtation gets worse as the woman gets older. I think the New York Times article we're quoting said that by age 40, there are twice as many men as women. Now we're all perfectly capable of reading census reports, and we know that it just ain't so -- the differences are a few percent at most. What these statistics really say is that there are twice as many women who want to get married as there are men who want to get married, and thus the situation for women who want to get married is pretty grim. You might also want to observe that the situation for men who don't want to get married is just as grim. My questions are these: Why do women want to get married? Why do the women's media work so hard to perpetuate the situation? How many professional, educated women ARE there who are having trouble finding a man? It seems to me that in the proffessional, educated fields, there are more men than women. Do women really want to get married all that much? Or am I making a mistake in assuming that Cynthia Hiemel and Helen Gurly Brown speak for anyone but themselves? Why has the feminist movement (as represented by MS) turned around on the issue -- as I said before, they've gone from putting down marriage as a form of repression, to dedicating about a third of their issues to finding a man. -ed falk, sun microsystems
linda@amdcad.UUCP (Linda Seltzer) (02/28/86)
> > Women who defer marriage to go to college and pursue a career are > finding that by the time they decide to marry, the marriage market has > evaporated, according to a new study by two Yale sociologists and a > Harvard economist. It's this view of marriage as a "market" that makes people feel desperate until they marry someone they don't love, just for security. There is really no reason to get married except that you have met and gotten to know a specific person whom you love and whom desire to have as your family member. I see no point in the "get them while they last" attitude when it comes to marriage - I'll leave that for the sale rack of the Saks Fifth Avenue.
rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) (03/01/86)
In article <3300@sun.uucp> falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) writes: >>MARRIAGE RATE DECLINES FOR WOMEN WHO DELAY >> >>By William R Greer >>New York Times >> >>Women who defer marriage to go to college and pursue a career are >>finding that by the time they decide to marry, the marriage market has >>evaporated, according to a new study by two Yale sociologists and a >>Harvard economist. > etc. > > <a lot of complaints about the article> > >What offended me most was the first sentence of the story where the >writer asserted that the "marriage market has evaporated", and then >doesn't give one scrap of evidence to show that the "marriage market" >is actually an issue. Why assume that all women who aren't married >are trying to be. Time for a "let's listen to what the other person is saying before we answer what we think they're about to say" lecture. The first sentence of the quoted article specifically says "by the time they decide to marry". I assume that unless these Yale and Harvard guys are real bozos that they had *some* basis for deciding that the women they studied had decided to get married and were having trouble finding a suitable partner. A side-note to Ed: I did, other than the one point above, agree with the points you made in your article concerning women pursuing a career. -- The MAD Programmer -- 919-228-3313 (Cornet 291) alias: Curtis Jackson ...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd mgnetp ]!burl!rcj ...![ ihnp4 cbosgd akgua masscomp ]!clyde!rcj
hrs@homxb.UUCP (H.SILBIGER) (03/02/86)
There recently was another news item on the radio about professional women not being able to marry and sacrificing themselves for a career. It seems more likely that these women aren't willing to sacrifice themselves to a marriage with some unsuitable male. Herman Silbiger ihnp4!homxb!hrs
booter@lll-crg.ARpA (Elaine Richards) (03/06/86)
In article <1292@homxb.UUCP> hrs@homxb.UUCP (H.SILBIGER) writes: >There recently was another news item on the radio about professional >women not being able to marry and sacrificing themselves >for a career. > >It seems more likely that these women aren't willing to sacrifice >themselves to a marriage with some unsuitable male. A good career pays better than a bad spouse. :-) Marketing or law, for example do not borrow money from you or spill coffee on your sneakers. Systems analysis will not get you pregnant and dentistry will not crack its knuckles or snore all night. E *****
larrabee@decwrl.DEC.COM (Tracy Larrabee) (03/06/86)
Tony Wuersch asked me to post this for him since he didn't save a copy. His is one of only two private responses I got, and the other person did not suggest I make his opinions public. ----- From: amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw (Tony Wuersch) To: cae780!amdcad!decwrl!larrabee Subject: Re: Professional women remaining perpetually single Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca. I thought I'd reply to you so you might summarize in the future. I used to be a grad student in sociology, so I know what a parametric model is. It's just a model where the result (marriage) depends on something else (one or more factors). That's all it means. I think you're absolutely right in your mail to point out that it's hard to tell what a study like this means for 25 year old women looking ten years hence. The problem with a study like this is that the trend it points out (leading to low chances of marriage as women get over 35 or so) is just that, a trend. Pointing out a trend is pointing out something interesting today. Predicting from a trend is a much more risky business. We really couldn't know if the trend would last without knowing some of the causal factors behind the trend. If we could say that the same causal factors operated in similar proportions through the period from which predictions are being taken (say 10 or 15 years back), and that the same causal factors will operate in similar proportions in the future, then we could say that the trend has some likelihood of coming true. When the issue is women and marriage, and we know that depends very much on the status of women in the labor market, and that status has been changing rapidly, then I don't think one could claim that the causal factors are remaining the same over time. I would also think that once the disproportion between men and women in the relative numbers each is willing to marry (for instance, at 35 maybe, 60 women desiring only 45 available men for marriage, on the average in some urban areas) becomes obvious and a first generation of career women learns about this, the next female generation, if it wants to marry, will act very differently, either changing its expectations about men or deciding to marry earlier, or both. That is, there is no way such a trend will last without women adjusting to it first. If somebody could predict which path women would choose to avoid the conclusion of trends like these (as opposed to just drawing a line as if the trend will continue), then I'd give that research a lot more attention. Tony Wuersch amd!ubvax!tonyw
herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong) (03/09/86)
this is the ME FIRST generation. why give yourself to someone who can
hurt you when you can keep yourself all to yourself with no strings
attached?
(only half 8-))
Herb Chong...
I'm still user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
VNET,BITNET,NETNORTH,EARN: HERBIE AT YKTVMH
UUCP: {allegra|cbosgd|cmcl2|decvax|ihnp4|seismo}!philabs!polaris!herbie
CSNET: herbie.yktvmh@ibm-sj.csnet
ARPA: herbie.yktvmh.ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa, herbie%yktvmh.bitnet@wiscvm
========================================================================
DISCLAIMER: what you just read was produced by pouring lukewarm
tea for 42 seconds onto 9 people chained to 6 Ouiji boards.