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By Daniel McGinn
Newsweek
June 5, 2006 issue - When Laurie Aronson was 29, she had little patience for people who inquired why she still wasn't married. "I'm not a little spinster who sits home Friday night and cries," she'd say. As she passed 35, however, and one relationship after another failed to lead to the altar, she began to worry. "Things were looking pretty bleak," she says. But then a close friend's brother—a man she'd known for years—divorced. Slowly their friendship blossomed into romance. At 39, Aronson married him, becoming Laurie Aronson Starr and the stepmom to his three kids. Then, after five years of infertility treatment, she became pregnant with a son who'll be 4 in July. "My parents are thrilled—it's a relief for everyone," says Starr, now 49. "I wish I could have found the right person earlier and had more children. But I'm ecstatic."

As happy endings go, hers has a particularly delicious irony. Twenty years ago this week, Aronson was one of more than a dozen single women featured in a NEWSWEEK cover story. In "The Marriage Crunch," the magazine reported on new demographic research predicting that white, college-educated women who failed to marry in their 20s faced abysmal odds of ever tying the knot. According to the research, a woman who remained single at 30 had only a 20 percent chance of ever marrying. By 35, the probability dropped to 5 percent. In the story's most infamous line, NEWSWEEK reported that a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to ever marry. That comparison wasn't in the study, and even in those pre-9/11 days, it struck many people as an offensive analogy. Nonetheless, it quickly became entrenched in pop culture and is still routinely cited in TV shows and news stories.

Across the country, women reacted with fury, anxiety—and skepticism. "The popular media have invented a national marital crisis on the basis of a single academic experiment ... of dubious statistical merit," wrote Susan Faludi, then a 27-year-old reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, who saw the controversy as one example of a backlash against feminism. Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "How gleefully they warn that an uppity woman may be overqualified for the marriage market. Reach too high, young lady, and you'll end up in the stratosphere of slim pickings."

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Today a new generation of sociologists continues to tinker with the delayed-marriage puzzle. The latest research—a 2001 study by Princeton sociologists Joshua Goldstein and Catherine Kenney, and a 2004 paper by Maryland's Martin—concludes that roughly 90 percent of baby boomers will eventually marry. In a shift, however, the newer studies conclude that nowadays, a college degree makes a woman more likely to marry, not less. The Princeton paper suggests that for female college graduates born between 1960 and 1964, 97.4 percent will eventually marry. (Coauthor Kenney, now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says the study probably overstated the figure, but thinks the college benefit remains substantial.) This new twist has given researchers another worry: that marriage, which confers a host of economic, tax and child-rearing advantages, is becoming disproportionately reserved for better-educated, middle- and upper-class elites. "There appear to be winners and losers in our globalized economy, and the personal lives of the winners appear to be diverging from the personal lives of the losers," says Hopkins's Cherlin.

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Interesting. I have to admit that I'm one of the single girls who hated that statistic. It's actually a relief to hear that it's not so bad, even though my life isn't driven by statistics. It's just nice to hear that I'm actually pretty normal. It's also nice to remember that I can have children through my 30s and into my 40s. No problem!
 

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Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
 
I read a different article last week that said that 80% of the women named in that Newsweek article are now married.
 

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Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
 
Yeah, I think 8 were married and 3 not. They talk about them later in the linked article and the women who didn't marry are somehow involved in huge world-changing organizations. It's cool.
 

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Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
 

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Originally posted by Narnia:
Yeah, I think 8 were married and 3 not. They talk about them later in the linked article and the women who didn't marry are somehow involved in huge world-changing organizations. It's cool.

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Population size of 11? Someone needs to go take Statistics 101.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
I assume that the sample was larger than that, and that there were merely 11 women that Newsweek profiled.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
That wasn't the population of the original study, it was just the featured women who they interviewed.


Someone should read the things he critisizes first.
 

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Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
 
Yes. (that was to Noemon, but it works with Kwea's statement as well.)
 

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Posted by sarahdipity (Member # 3254) on :
 
Oh that is still just depressing. I already hear from my family how I've made myself totally ineligible to date 95% of the male population. *hides from this thread*
 

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Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
 
How do they think you have 'made yourself ineligible?'

I understand how you feel though. I sometimes feel like I'm intimidating because I'm pretty outgoing, well educated, and tall. The pool of guys I'm regularly exposed to don't seem to have the guts to do anything but hang out in groups...and we're all almost 30 or in our 30s.

Because of that, I've set myself up to be isolated. I've let my schooling and work take up my life and claimed that I'm too busy/tired for anything else. I haven't put any effort into dating during the last 3 years or so. It's scary now because when I am in a situation where I can meet people and 'mingle,' I realize that I've forgotten how and that I'm terrified. I think I've regressed a bit in that area, but I'm hoping to be better gradually.
 

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Posted by sarahdipity (Member # 3254) on :
 
Oh by working on getting my PhD. *laugh*

I think I'd be considered fairly driven and outgoing. The pool of guys I'm regularly exposed to also are fairly ...shy (think CS PhD students and other related fields).


Yeah so Narnia. We're sounding like identical twins as far as dating goes. I'm fine with mingling. But I rarely meet new people. And I haven't been "working" at it lately either.
 

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Posted by Swampjedi (Member # 7374) on :
 
CS? PhD? Single female? <drools>

I dream of getting my PhD in CS one day. That's awesome.

J (Part of the 5% )
 

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