Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Marriage American-style

From Brookings:

"Educated Americans have not turned their backs on marriage; the well-documented “marriage gap” is mostly due to a decline in marriage rates among the less educated. As a general rule, the more letters American women have after their names—and therefore the greater their economic independence—the more likely they are to be married."


That bottom line is interesting. Seems arrested, as is the top line.

As often happens with Brookings, I can't agree with all of the commentary. For instance:

In the past, highly-educated women faced an unenviable choice between accepting a patriarchal marriage or forgoing marriage and children entirely. Now they are able to raise their children within a stable marriage without compromising their independence.

In the past there were very few "highly educated" women. There were smart women but not many went to university and I reject that its known what was going on inside other people's marriages anyway. I wasn't raised in a 'patriarchal' family' and neither was my husband.

Men compromised their independence too. The role of sole breadwinner in most marriages tied them to jobs and careers they may not have wanted. That always seems overlooked in the feminist dialogue.






3 comments:

JC said...

One of the fun things that graph suggests to me is that is that higher education, rather than "freeing" women makes them more desirable as marriage and bed partners... not quite how the sisterhood imagined I should think.

Other consequences are like is much more likely to marry like so that less educated women are denied the traditional route of marrying up to improve personal wealth and status and you also see how inequality can now flourish in even well off countries.

More.. you can see how class is reintroduced back into egalitarian societies.

JC

Jamie said...

Back in my Grand-Daddies day a man could work 40 hours and support a family. Then a whole bunch of ball-busting-bra-burners came along and packed a hissy-fit. Now both men and women have to work 50 plus hours just to get by.

Well done ladies

Jamie said...

I know you like grap Lindsay.

http://www.returnofkings.com/75440/38-pictures-that-show-the-decline-of-america-since-the-1950s

Interesting.