@nathancushing

Kate Bolick as the cover story in this month’s Atlantic. In it, she discusses various points within the umbrella topic of women and singledom:

“Ten years later, I occasionally ask myself the same question. Today I am 39, with too many ex-boyfriends to count and, I am told, two grim-seeming options to face down: either stay single or settle for a “good enough” mate. At this point, certainly, falling in love and getting married may be less a matter of choice than a stroke of wild great luck. A decade ago, luck didn’t even cross my mind.”

I’m fascinated with both the sociology and solipsism of being unmarried. I couldn’t agree more with one of Bolick’s many criticisms, chiefly that American culture still casts a derogatory gaze upon those who choose to be unmarried—especially women.

In my group of friends, I remain the oldest member who is still unmarried (I just turned 29). While that age may strike you as being not-all-that old for an unmarried male living in the U.S. in the 21st Century, my September birthday nudged me just beyond the median age for men to marry: 28 (for women, the median age is 26).

Bolick does well in attributing a breadth of data on the subject of marriage in the modern day. However, some of the most fascinating portions of Bolick’s article comes in the form of historical context:

“Take the years after the Civil War, when America reeled from the loss of close to 620,000 men, the majority of them from the South. An article published last year in The Journal of Southern History reported that in 1860, there were 104 marriageable white men for every 100 white women; in 1870, that number dropped to 87.5. A generation of Southern women found themselves facing a “marriage squeeze.” They could no longer assume that they would become wives and mothers—a terrifying prospect in an era when women relied on marriage for social acceptability and financial resources.”

One of the points that Bolick makes with this (and other) historical data is to underscore the point that cultural norms and circumstance influences the relationship men and women have in relation to one another.

Something that Bolick asserts (something of which I am not entirely convinced) is that there is a growing dearth of marriable men (a bad thing) as a result of women increasingly taking hold of traditionally male-dominated positions in the workforce (a good thing):

“As of last year, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, up from 26 percent in 1980. Today women outnumber men not only in college but in graduate school; they earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded in 2010, and men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma.”

“For all the changes the institution has undergone, American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity.”

I am not a woman, and so, am rather loathe to generalize or put myself into the position of hypothetical Millennial woman. I will say, though, that I think it a very good thing (both socially and individually) that women are increasingly not feeling as though they must “marry up” (i.e. marrying a man who is more successful than they in the many nuances with which ‘successful’ carries).

I’m also a bit of an anomaly, in addition to being unmarried. Ido not share the historical stereotype that men prefer younger, under or moderately educated, women. Quite the opposite. I’m most attracted to women who are older than myself, and who are quite intelligent (be them with a graduate degree or not). So, ultimately, this cultural change about which Bolick writes, one in which women are becoming more educated and feeling less pressure to “marry up” so that they can grab financial stability along with the hopes of hitching a ride on the social mobility train, suits my predilections quite well. What’s good for me, however, is not so good for women necessarily.

“Last year, nearly twice as many single women bought homes as did single men. And yet, what are our ideas about single people? Perverted misanthropes, crazy cat ladies, dating-obsessed shoe shoppers, etc.—all of them some form of terribly lonely.”

I can relate somewhat. Being that I am an oddity in my circle of friends because I am unmarried, I’ve often been privy to hints and tones that suggest, more or less, that I must feel “alone” or “sad” or “unfulfilled” because I am unmarried. These tones are never emitted with an air of condescension (well, maybe a little bit) or outright ill-judgement—people just think I’m missing out on something that’s bigger, better, and brighter than being absent of a wedding band.

Ultimately, like Bolick, I think such thoughts are bullshit.