The XX Factor: What women really think.

Of Spinsters & Specter

That late-twenties average age of marriage was called the "Western model," since it took hold in Western Europe, not southern or eastern. Some historians have suggested that the relatively high traditional average age of marriage was one of the economic engines behind western Europe's success. People in eastern and southern Europe married their daughters off at comparatively young ages, with correspondingly damaging effects on fertility (high), maternal and child mortality (high), and female productivity (low). If you wait to get married, and both parties save up their pennies to invest in the shop and the kids, it's good for you, good for economy, and good for society. It's ahistorical to suggest otherwise. So there. 

BUT I can't pause to write that paragraph because like Emily B, I am absolutely gobsmacked by Specter switching parties. Yes, the Republican party has moved sharply to the right (and to the south—the olde New England Republican, capitalist, fiscally moderate, and socially liberal, is on life support) since he was first elected. Are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe next?

Like you, Emily, I have the image of Arlen Specter attacking Anita Hill's credibility—and doing it hatefully, misogynistically—seared into my retinas. I swore back then never to forgive, as I suspect did hundreds of thousands of women, appalled by what we saw. But waiting right beside that image is another one: of Ted Kennedy sitting limply on the same Senatorial panel, silent and powerless to defend Hill because of his own mottled history. Politicians are imperfect, much like the rest of us, albeit with more power and more media exposure. I suppose—like the rest of us—they must be assessed by the totality of their deeds, not by the worst of their televised moments.  

Waiting for Mom's Marriage Marching Orders

As Dayo points out, there is much to puzzle over in Mark Regnerus' push for earlier marriages in the Washington Post. For one, we're never actually told why late marriage is a problem, only that marriage "wisely entered into" has various social and economic benefits. (Note the hedge; bad marriages hit wellbeing hard.) We're told that the "fault" for this trend "lies less with indecisive young people than it does with us, their parents." Where is the evidence for this claim? It would seem to contradict a decade of research weighing the influence of parents versus the influence of peer groups. No responsible sociologist would privilege the influence of parents over the influence of friends in reference to say, declining birth rates; is there something special about marriage? Or is it just convenient to pretend that the desire for late marriage is imposed from above, forcing young women into a position they'd rather avoid?

Because he refuses to allow for the possibility that 21-year-olds just don't want to get married, Regnerus backs himself into a contradiction. He portrays young women as fickle children, desirous of marriage yet incapable of resisting the demands of career-focused parents. But given the thrust of the argument, he also needs to portray the same women as independent, responsible decision makers. "Most young women," he asserts, "are mature enough to handle marriage." Which is it? Surely a college kid helplessly subject to the whims of her mother is not ready for a ring.

I'm less troubled by the piece's clumsy condescension than its attempt to sell ideology as sociology. Regnerus claims that marriage is environmentally beneficial without any acknowledgment of the fact that marriages occasionally produce children, whose existence will surely wipe out the energy-saving benefits of combining households.  He simply states, without explanation, that late marriage is an "emotional problem." Objective! But remember, we're doing science here, ladies: Though it may not be "cool" to state the cold, hard facts, Regnerus sighs, "My job is to map trends, not to affirm them." Oh, the courage.

The Spinsterhood of the Traveling Pants

I'm glad E.J. mentioned the outdated and offensive label "spinster" (evoking the hag cartoon on an "old maid" playing card deck), because recently in news stories describing talent show contestant Susan Boyle, I've noticed the insulting characterization making a comeback. But what is the correct term for unmarried women in the post-feminist world? As Kerry noted recently about sociologist Andrew Cherlin's research, in a culture where "marriage matters more here than elsewhere," in the United States, "only a marriage ring guarantees first-class citizenship."

Meantime, though the term spinster is rude, the condition it describes, unmarried women over 40, is common. I'm very glad Dayo brought up the Mark Regnerus essay on the appallingly short shelf life of women. Like Emily, I married relatively late in life. I was 35 when I got engaged, 25 years ago, and had life experience, a career, and a child. But, as a baby boomer, even at my mid-career age, there were comparatively plenty of single available men. Although I agree with Meghan's assessment that Regernus presents a narrow-minded and patronizing sociological premise, he was not wrong when he wrote, "Marriage will be there for men when they're ready. And most do get there. Eventually." Distressingly, however, somewhere along the line, many single ladies with career and education priorities find they have entered a no man's land. Awkwardly, as Jess facetiously (I think) supports, the geezerish single men my age prefer to date women 10 to 20 years younger. 

In the sixth season of Sex And The City, the inestimable Candice Bergen, as Carrie Bradshaw's powerful, glamorous, Vogue editor, scolds the younger woman for dating Aleksandr Petrovsky (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov), one of the infinitesimally few age-appropriate men available. As Enid, Bergen tells Carrie, "There are no men, anywhere. I am a 50-something woman and there's a very small pool, it's very small, it's a wading pool, really." She tells the advice columnist, "so what I want to know, is why are you swimming in my wading pool?" 

The answer is that a man shortage also affects women in Carrie's cohort. The character Mia played by Hope Davis in the new season of another HBO series, In Treatment, despairs of ever meeting a "smart, interesting, available man who's over 40." She tells the single, attractive therapist played by Gabriel Byrne, "they're either married or there's a very good reason why they're not...and if they're divorced, they want them young."  

It sounds grim, but it's not necessarily so. A close friend much younger than I, who treats my husband and me so nicely that our daughter wrote on her Facebook page "thanks for taking care of bonnie and jim" is a former lawyer in her early 40s, stunningly attractive and funny, who has a gardening and flowers business. Though not lacking in male friends who "shoulda put a ring on it," my friend has never married. Wondering if, as an old married lady, I was poorly attuned to the word's connotations, I asked what she thought of the word spinster. "Sure, I'd like a partner and children" she answered the more general question, "but right now I have neither and I'm still pretty happy." In fact, she told me, "I'm into spinster power."

Old Dads for Sale

Maternal Age, Autism, and Agency

Meghan, I was reminded of your comment about young women being bludgeoned with reports of their declining fertility after age 35 when reading about a new study on autism that claims that autism may be linked to moms 35 years or older. This study, from the University of Utah, also found that autism is more likely in first-born children and also in babies born breech. However, even though the write-up of the study on the website ScienceDaily is quick to note that the research "didn't identify a causal relationship" between these things and autism, I fear this will just be another weapon in Mark Regnerus' arsenal. Especially since:

Their investigation showed that the mother's age when giving birth (older than 34), breech presentation, and being firstborn were significant risk factors for the development of an [autism spectrum disorder]. The researchers also identified a small but significant relationship between the increased duration of education among mothers of those children. 

Of course, they don't mention in the article that perhaps more educated mothers get better medical care, and their children are diagnosed with autism more not because they are more likely to have the disorder…but because it's diagnosed more frequently. As you pointed out, Meghan, agency is key here. We're all well aware of the risks of waiting to have children later (even though this particular study seems dubious), and I don't see why a "small but significant" correlation between late child bearing and autism should make us all rush out to get knocked up in our 20s.

Are We Seriously Talking About the "Market Value" of a Thirty Year Old Woman?

Jess, Dayo: Mark Regnerus may usefully point out that some women wish it were more acceptable to get married young. But the larger thrust of his article is characterized by that depressing narrow-mindedness that older male writers always bring to the task when they begin bemoaning the sad state of young women's sexual, romantic, and reproductive lives. (And somehow it's always the young women's lives they're bemoaning, as I noted here for Slate some years back.) Regnerus can't seem to make up his mind. On the one hand, he acknowledges the well-known fact that getting married young means you're more likely to get divorced than getting married when you're older. (According to the National Marriage Project,getting married after 25 significantly reduces the chance of divorce.) Yet he states confidently that "Marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you're fully formed." Hmm? That may be his experience, but he doesn't have many facts to back him up. After all, marriage can be a deformative institution too, as all those divorces would suggest.

The most pernicious element of the article, though, is its didactic, implicit assumption that women heading into their 30s need to pay attention to their "market value," as if we were cows with no identity or worth beyond our saleability on the sexual market. Every young woman today has had it drilled into her head that her fertility diminishes "radically" at 35; reciting all the reasons that we should be terrified about our relative decline in sexual value is just another tired old form of what Susan Faludi so rightly named a "backlash" to feminism. For some reason, these men worry even more than we do about our futures. Leaving me to wonder what I always wonder: Isn't it time for them to stop reading studies that affirm what everyone already implicitly knows, and attend to their own affairs? Life isn't fair, as my mother always used to say, but marrying the wrong guy at 25 isn't necessarily the best solution to the problem.

Bear Market for Marriage

Dayo, let's play devil's advocate about Mark Regnerus's article, shall we? As women in our 20s, let's say we take his column about marriage as gospel, and try to get married as quickly as possible lest our eggs dry up and our "market value" plummets. How are we meant to go about this? As Regnerus points out, "Marriage will be there for men when they're ready. And most do get there. Eventually." So I suppose we should only date older men, who may or may not be ready to marry us, even if our market value is premium. 

I would argue that women getting married later and later has as much to do with us getting our "MBAs, JDs, MDs and PhDs" as it has to do with men who are continuously sent the message that marriage will be there for them whenever they want it.
 

I Do, Part Two

Yes Means I Do

[M]any women report feeling peer pressure to avoid giving serious thought to marriage until they're at least in their late 20s. If you're seeking a mate in college, you're considered a pariah, someone after her "MRS degree." Actively considering marriage when you're 20 or 21 seems so sappy, so unsexy, so anachronistic. Those who do fear to admit it—it's that scandalous.

How did we get here? The fault lies less with indecisive young people than it does with us, their parents. Our own ideas about marriage changed as we climbed toward career success. Many of us got our MBAs, JDs, MDs and PhDs. Now we advise our children to complete their education before even contemplating marriage, to launch their careers and become financially independent. We caution that depending on another person is weak and fragile. We don't want them to rush into a relationship. We won't help you with college tuition anymore, we threaten. Don't repeat our mistakes, we warn.

Yes, there are advantages—obvious ones—to getting married. I don’t think kids today are unaware that it’s a financially preferable arrangement. But this “our children” angle seems disingenuous. In fact, the whole piece seems targeted not at “indecisive young people” and their enablers, but at young women in particular. Maybe I’m as out of touch with shifting social conventions as the author, but I don’t sense coequal lecturing of men about the ills of dependence. (In my head, men receive more of a "wild oats" conversation.) Not to speak of withholding tuition!

I suppose Regnerus’ argument troubles me most where it suggests—with little proof—that a conservative, gendered norm is returning to what had been his generation’s wayward adventure into higher education and marriages “with math on their side.” Further, it’s hard to tell of what he complains: Does Regnerus want more marriages, younger marriages or more stable marriages?

If he had made the point that marrying early and then continuing the 20s and 30s trajectory of college, bars, apartments, mistakes, MBAs, JDs, MDs, and PhDs, that would suggest his flacking for marriage were based on some theory of economics and companionship. But his nagging is targeted at the women who have collectively embraced third wave feminist cake-eating because then they won’t procreate. Men who wait and wait for the ring “get there,” he says—whereas women must “beg, pray, borrow and pay” to reclaim fertility later in life. In other words, Regnerus conflates enthusiasm for child-rearing with enthusiasm for marriage—a mythology one would think modern reality continually explodes.