twenty-nine for men) was beneficial to the educated middle and upper middle classes, especially women in these classes, but had deleterious effects on the non-college-educated population. The reason was that less-educated people (defined as those with only high school and some college and referred to in the report as âMiddle Americansâ) were skipping the marriage step but going ahead and having children anyway. The report identified two models of marriage. There was the âcapstoneâ model, which sees marriage as a kind of reward for accomplishing any number of personal and professional goals, or, as they put it, âhaving your ducks in a row.â And then there was the âcornerstoneâ model, which sees marriage as the foundation and starting point from which you build a life.
The capstone model is fine, the research suggested, if youâre talking about people who are going to follow through and actually get married when they finish law school or get that Ph.D. The problem is that only a third of the nationâs population has a four-year college degree. The other two thirds might aspire to a capstone marriage, but never quite get around to it because they canât rise out of their low-wage jobs. They often go ahead and have children, though.
The National Marriage Project thought this was a very bad thing indeed. The âKnot Yetâ report cited statistics showing that unmarried people drank more alcohol and reported being less satisfied with their lives than married people. It brought up the usual findings about children born out of wedlock experiencing more emotional instability and more problems in school than kids with married parents. It did not devote even one syllable to the subject of gay marriage.
The other writer from L.A., who I wonât name even though you could figure out who she is on Google in two seconds, was the author of a bestselling book enjoining marriage-seeking women to set aside their pickiness and âsettleâ for men who donât necessarily meet every item on their towering list of requirements. The basis of her book had been a long article sheâd published in a major national magazine. Sheâd taken some flak for her article, not least of all from me in my newspaper column. Admittedly, there were probably more pressing topics in the news that week for me to tackle and admittedly there was nothing inherently offensive about the authorâs premise in and of itself, which is that some women overlook men whoâd make good husbands and fathers simply because those men arenât rich, tall, or graduates of the Ivy League. Still, with sentences on the order of âEvery woman I knowâno matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secureâfeels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits thirty and finds herself unmarriedâ and âAll I can say is, if you say youâre not worried, either youâre in denial or youâre lying,â I could no more have kept myself from smacking her down than I could have kept myself from squeezing an enormous, ripe pimple on my chin.
Iâd actually known the author for years. I put us in the category of âfriendly acquaintances.â Or at least weâd been friendly until I took her to task in my column for setting age thirty as a sell-by date and thereby assuming that all women, no matter how successful and ambitious and secure, want marriage and children above all else. In retrospect, I see that my response was a bit off point. The article wasnât talking about people like me, who, at age thirty, happily embarked on the âadventureâ of living in a lopsided, shacklike farmhouse in the rural Midwest with a guy who was about as marriageable as an electric fence. It was talking about normal people who wanted normal things. It was talking about people who get their adventuring out of the way in college or even in high
The capstone model is fine, the research suggested, if youâre talking about people who are going to follow through and actually get married when they finish law school or get that Ph.D. The problem is that only a third of the nationâs population has a four-year college degree. The other two thirds might aspire to a capstone marriage, but never quite get around to it because they canât rise out of their low-wage jobs. They often go ahead and have children, though.
The National Marriage Project thought this was a very bad thing indeed. The âKnot Yetâ report cited statistics showing that unmarried people drank more alcohol and reported being less satisfied with their lives than married people. It brought up the usual findings about children born out of wedlock experiencing more emotional instability and more problems in school than kids with married parents. It did not devote even one syllable to the subject of gay marriage.
The other writer from L.A., who I wonât name even though you could figure out who she is on Google in two seconds, was the author of a bestselling book enjoining marriage-seeking women to set aside their pickiness and âsettleâ for men who donât necessarily meet every item on their towering list of requirements. The basis of her book had been a long article sheâd published in a major national magazine. Sheâd taken some flak for her article, not least of all from me in my newspaper column. Admittedly, there were probably more pressing topics in the news that week for me to tackle and admittedly there was nothing inherently offensive about the authorâs premise in and of itself, which is that some women overlook men whoâd make good husbands and fathers simply because those men arenât rich, tall, or graduates of the Ivy League. Still, with sentences on the order of âEvery woman I knowâno matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secureâfeels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits thirty and finds herself unmarriedâ and âAll I can say is, if you say youâre not worried, either youâre in denial or youâre lying,â I could no more have kept myself from smacking her down than I could have kept myself from squeezing an enormous, ripe pimple on my chin.
Iâd actually known the author for years. I put us in the category of âfriendly acquaintances.â Or at least weâd been friendly until I took her to task in my column for setting age thirty as a sell-by date and thereby assuming that all women, no matter how successful and ambitious and secure, want marriage and children above all else. In retrospect, I see that my response was a bit off point. The article wasnât talking about people like me, who, at age thirty, happily embarked on the âadventureâ of living in a lopsided, shacklike farmhouse in the rural Midwest with a guy who was about as marriageable as an electric fence. It was talking about normal people who wanted normal things. It was talking about people who get their adventuring out of the way in college or even in high
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