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More on the Late Marriage Myth

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To amplify Amanda’s post on the exploding of Newsweek‘s “women over 40 never get married for the first time” myth, Jeff Zaslow has an excellent article which further elaborates on the article’s perniciousness–in particular, what he correctly identifies as the original article’s “core message” that “educated, career-focused women risk spending their lives alone.” First, with respect to the individual women discussed in the Newsweek (most of whom ended up, in fact, being married) an important addendum:

Well, it turns out that less than 10% of college-educated women now ages 50 to 60 have never been married, census records show. And I did something far less scientific: I checked in with 10 women who in 1986 appeared in Newsweek and other media reports about the study. Eight of them had found a husband. Two others were single by choice.

So, in other words, they’ve got literally nothing. Not only does the systematic data refute them, but once you consider that some women might actually not want to get married, they don’t even have a single cherry-picked anecdote. Hell, even Maureen Dowd can come up with some of the latter. Speaking of Dowd, Zaslow also provides further data falsifying Dowd’s argument that feminism is a lie, and has changed little, because men are inherently uninterested in accomplished, educated women:

Meanwhile, new research suggests that women today who are highly educated are actually more likely to find husbands. For a study released last month, Elaina Rose, a University of Washington economics professor, crunched three decades of census data. She found that in 1980, women ages 40 to 44 with professional degrees or doctorates were 25% less likely to be married than women in that age group with just high-school diplomas. By 2000, women ages 40 to 44 with postcollege education levels were slightly more apt to be married than women who finished only high school.

And, of course, another crucial aspect of Dowd’s argument is her dyed-in-the -wool classism: if the men in your immediate social circles are superficial sexists who want to marry their young maids and personal assistants and paralegals, well, you’re out of luck! Nothing to do but to whine and throw out a whole bunch of non-sequiturs about how it’s feminism’s fault somehow. But wait–is there an alternative strategy?

Christine Stroebel-Scimeca is a financial planner in Mequon, Wis. In 1986, at age 30, she appeared in Newsweek, telling of a date she had with a man who taunted her about her biological clock.

In the years that followed, she was sometimes panicky about her marital status. But at 38, tired of dating “superficial professionals,” she found the courage to approach the friendly, handsome man who ran the local butcher shop. She invited him to a small dinner party at her house. Though he had no college degree, he arrived with flowers and an open heart. They were married two years later. Ms. Stroebel-Scimeca never had children of her own but helped raise two stepsons.

What–you might actually find an attractive person who shares your values outside of a narrow group of professionals? What a crazy idea!

Anyway, the willingness of people–including the only female op-ed writer for EventheliberalNewYorkTimes–to recycle these well-worn reactionary falsehoods is, I think, the central lesson about the way the media approaches Hillary Clinton’s marriage: educated women can’t win. If you divorce an unfaithful husband, you’re undermining a sacred institution with your unwillingness to sacrifice for the good of the family; if you keep the marriage together, you’re a frigid materialist putting your ambitions above your personal dignity. Similarly, 50 years ago women weren’t supposed to be doctors and lawyers and such; once they started entering those professions in significant numbers, it was going to stop them from getting laid and having families, and we’ll just keep saying it even if it’s false. As Caitlin Flanagan’s career proves, there certainly is never a shortage of men who run media outlets who want to hear it.

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