With 185 women earning a college degree at age 22, for every 100 men, women are now outpacing men in obtaining higher education, as they have been in the last few decades. (In a recent Times article stated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) Additionally, more women are now employed than men due to the fact that men are more likely to work in cyclical or declining sectors. Thus the question becomes: In light of this, how likely are women to choose to marry? And, are women changing their expectations of what the man would bring to a marriage?
Things have changed since our parents were marrying; and yet some things are still the same: For example, in 1950, less than three-quarters of college-educated women had married by age 40, compared to 90% of their contemporaries who stopped schooling after high school. These days, women who are college-educated are more likely to marry than their less-educated counterparts. But they do tend to marry later in life, with only near 1/3 of them marrying by age 25. Therefore, we are not marrying for the financial security, but more for the relationship itself. As the Times article states, “the incentives to marry and form a family today are shifting from the old model of specialized and separate roles — a model that was less appealing for career-oriented women — to a new model focused on a shared vision for how to live one’s life.” In this, couples choose to marry on the basis of their shared visions of a balance of work, downtime, and family which are more suited to each other. As they each are earning an income, they are not dependent on the other in this way, causing less friction and less divorce, (according to one author in this article).
So in this case, women are no longer concerned about marrying someone with a higher earning potential than them. They may be looking for someone who will, instead, have a better ability to share and take part in parenting tasks, for example. They might also be looking for someone who will balance their stressful work life with hobbies that the two have in common to enjoy in their own time.
To read more about four specialists’ views on this topic, read the whole article, here.
Also, tell us your thoughts by leaving a comment, below.
(quote courtesy of New York Times, February 21, 2010.)
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