
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Jan. 22, 2007
/ 3 Shevat 5767
Are women giving up on marriage?
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Did you know that a majority of American women now live without husbands? I
didn't either, but last week the New York Times announced it on Page 1: "51% of
Women Are Now Living Without Spouse."
Taken at face value, that's a pretty disquieting statistic. If society is to
flourish and perpetuate itself, it must uphold marriage as a social ideal it
must raise boys and girls in a culture that encourages them to eventually marry
a partner of the opposite sex, make stable and loving homes together, and have
children who will one day form successful marriages of their own. The news that
most American women now live without husbands suggests that society's "ideal" is
dwindling to a minority taste.
"At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with
unmarried partners more often and for longer periods," reporter Sam Roberts
notes. "At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a
divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in
their newfound freedom."
That delight is voiced by nearly every woman quoted in the story. "The benefits
were completely unforeseen for me," says a 59-year-old divorcee, "the free time,
the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I
value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel, and cultural
events." Such are the joys of non marriage, another woman exults, that "every
day is like a present."
Roberts quotes William Frey of the Brookings Institution, who describes this
apparently happy husbandless majority as "a clear tipping point, reflecting the
culmination of post-1960 trends associated with greater independence and more
flexible lifestyles for women."
Well, maybe. Or maybe not. For when you try to pin down the numbers, Roberts's
startling finding turns out to depend on some awfully strained definitions.
"Women," for example, isn't the word most of us would use to describe high
school sophomores. Yet the Times includes girls as young as 15 in its analysis.
Not surprisingly, girls who in many cases aren't old enough to have a driver's
license are unlikely to have husbands. According to the Census Bureau's 2005
American Community survey, 97 percent of females between 15 and 19 have never
been married. Incorporating nearly 10 million teenagers in the ranks of
marriage-aged American "women" may be a good way to pad the number of those
without husbands, but it doesn't make that number any more enlightening.
Actually, Census data show that even with the 15- to 19-year-olds, a majority
of American females 51 percent are "now married." So how does the Times
reach a contrary conclusion? By excluding from the category of women with
husbands the "relatively small number of cases" in fact, it's more than 2
million in which "husbands are working out of town, are in the military, or
are institutionalized." That startling Page 1 headline is true, in other words,
only if the wives of US troops at war are deemed not to have husbands.
Marriage in America is undoubtedly less robust than it was 50 years ago. But it
is not yet a candidate for the endangered-species list, let alone the ash heap.
The Census Bureau reported last spring that by the time they are 30 to 34, a
large majority of American men and women 72 percent have been married.
Among Americans 65 and older, fully 96 percent have been married. Yes, the
divorce rate is high 17.7 per 1,000 marriages and many couples live
together without getting married. But marriage remains a key institution in
American life.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| 
… at a discount by clicking HERE.
|
|
Marriage advocates often grumble that everything is getting worse, writes
scholar David Blankenhorn in his forthcoming book, The Future of Marriage, but
it's time to acknowledge that some things are getting better: Divorce rates are
declining modestly. Teen pregnancy rates are dramatically lower. Rates of
reported marital happiness, after a long slide, appear to be rising. And a
substantial majority of American children, 67 percent, are being raised by
married parents.
By even wider margins, young Americans look forward to being married. The
University of Michigan's annual "Monitoring the Future" survey finds that 70
percent of 12th-grade boys and 82 percent of 12th-grade girls describe having a
good marriage and family life as "extremely important" to them. Even higher
percentages say that they expect to marry.
The '60s, the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, the rise of single motherhood
there is no question that marriage has been through the wringer. Americans
have good reason to be, as Blankenhorn writes, "in the midst of what might be
called a marriage moment a time of unusual, perhaps unprecedented, national
preoccupation with the status and future of marriage." Yet for all the buffeting
our most important social institution has taken, it remains a social ideal: Boys
and girls still aspire to become husbands and wives.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|