| The age of first marriage is higher than it's ever been: thirty-seven million Americans are waiting until their thirties or beyond. At the same time, some single men claim they don't want to date women over the age of 30 or 35, because they consider them to be a "reproductive liability." Is this ignorance or pragmatism? What can women do? And do you think the recent slate of articles about "baby panic" among older, professional women might cause the age of first marriage to start trending downward?" |
Men who select their mate based, at least partially, on their ability to have children, should definitely choose younger women. If strong, healthy children is a priority, then choose a mate who is as young as possible—18, generally. I don't see anything wrong with this, it's just a biological reality. Maggie Gallagher has a very good argument for this. She basically says that children from older mothers are more likely to have problems, and in vitro fertilization, etc. is very risky and expensive.
As for people marrying younger, I can't see it happening all over the place. I definitely can't see it happening here, or anywhere where young women are expected to be sexually provocative, assertive and independent. Making a choice for marriage for the reasons that Susan Shapiro Barash states implies that young women realize the pitfalls that older generations have seen, which I have my doubts about in this case. This isn't quite the same as the difference between the generation of women that stayed at home to raise kids and never thought about themselves or had a career vs those that left the home, pursued a career and were unavailable because they were climbing the corporate ladder. I think that there is a more subtle difference between young woen now and their mothers, and it takes a keener eye to witness it.
Divorce has become so commonplace that it seems that girls view serial monogamy as the norm, and kids can and will deal with the consequences. To get married when there are bound to be reasons for divorce (see the next question, when I get around to writing it) seems foolish. To seek out a lifetime mate in your early twenties seems hard to imagine, but it depends entirely on where you are. In Michigan, unmarried 28-year-old women are seen as fairly odd, and possibly defective. In Toronto and especially Montreal, it is pretty common for a woman of that age to be unmarried.
Maybe these urban women want to get married sooner, but have given up on insisting that it happen because urban men really don't want to. Most women want children, and marriage means children, right? Urban men are less into that than rural or suburban men are. Both men and women feel that men in particular have to get themselves really established before having a child, and this takes time.
Yet it seems to me that many of the sons of the second wave of equalist feminism would insist that women they date be self-made, which also takes time. The marriage-as-choice philosophy would be very ingrained, and someone who wants to be supported (or coddled, as some might feel) seems like an unfair situation to the man. Why does he have to work and establish himself so that a young woman can just walk in and live comfortably without working? If she is taking care of the kids that they will have, sure. But if that is not in the cards for whatever reason, then why bother getting married until you are absolutely sure that that is the person, the individual, (not the housekeeper or babysitter) you want?
If the marrying age were to decrease in women so that "they can have it all in a new way: husband, children, comfortable lifestyle and career when and if they choose, despite a fine education" (emphasis mine), women would have to sell the idea of what they hope to offer in a different way than women do now. They would have to convince men that they are a true complement that adds total value to their lives rather than an adjunct that adds some value to their lives. If the marrying age in men were to decrease, then they would have to be willing to sacrifice their independence and part of their lives in general for an ideal: a family.
Is Jason an anomaly? I don't think so. Most of the men I know want to get married, they want to have a family and not in some vague, indistinct future kind of way. They want it now or in the next couple of years.
I've said this before, but I do not think that men and women are all that different in their basic desires (whatever they may be). There are women who marry young (I guess, given current trends, that would be me) and women who don't want to marry at all. And all kinds in between.
What IS different is each gender's ability to achieve what they want, as well as the means they employ to ahcieve it. They are so vastly different I expect that often the sameness gets obscured.
I am really not sure that Jason is an anomaly. I would say that most men wish they were in an emotional, financial, etc, optimal state to get married, and then they would do it, but when reality sets in, things change.
I grant you the means by which each gender achieves their goals may be different, but the ability is different? How so?
What changes? If the reality is that it's something you want, then what changes your mind? And which reality is real?