Friday, January 10, 2003

A story published today by the Washington Times reports that about one-third of the total adult population — some 77 million Americans aged 20 and over — are unmarried. Forty-seven million of them (26 million men and 21 million women) have never married.

Culture-trend watcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, best known for her April 1993 "Dan Quayle Was Right" article in the Atlantic Monthly on behalf of two-parent families, says women have to work harder.

"I found a lot of women didn't think about it until they were 28, 29 or 30, because they felt that when they were ready, the men would be ready, too," she says. "They didn't realize it would take some sort of focused effort to find men who are suitable."

Church and family — the traditional institutions that once helped in finding a mate — are now irrelevant, she says, because parents live too far apart from their unmarried offspring to be of much help.

"Women are expected to take the romantic initiative these days. This was once a male responsibility, but now the men hang back and wait for the women to make the first overture. Although proposals of marriage can come from either the woman or the man, it should be the male prerogative to take the initiative."

Many people agree, such as the Rev. Brett Fuller, pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Herndon. "I don't know what's wrong with men today," he said in a recent sermon. "Maybe I found the finest woman on the planet [to marry]. But I know there are other daughters of Eve who are worthy of marriage. I don't know what you single men are waiting for.

Romantic disappointment has emerged as a generational theme, says Mrs. Whitehead, whose latest book, "Why There Are No Good Men Left," was fueled by the difficulties her daughters, ages 33 and 34, have encountered in finding mates. In tandem with her research for the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, she found many men who didn't want to commit to marriage and many women who did.

"There are good men," she says, "but it's very difficult to find them when you don't have a courtship or mating system that fits the contemporary woman's timetable," which is to secure an undergraduate and graduate degree plus a earn her niche in the marketplace.

"With women my age, it was common to look for a husband among the college-age population, where you found a lot of never-married, similarly matched young men," says Mrs. Whitehead, 58. "College is still a select pool today, but it's not the time most of them feel it's the time to marry and settle down."

Mrs. Whitehead's book refrains from criticizing cohabitation; it is a lifestyle one-quarter of all single women ages 25 to 39 engage in. More than half of these unions eventually lead to marriage.

But several surveys, including two from Yale University and the University of Wisconsin, have shown such marriages are 50 percent to 80 percent more likely to break up, compared to couples who did not live together before marriage.

"In my interviews with women who had cohabited, it amazed me how casually they went into it. They never asked the men where they wanted to go and whether they wanted marriage. The women assumed it would lead to marriage and they were terribly surprised and shocked to learn that was not his idea.

"Cohabitation is a notorious time-waster if your goal is marriage. And cohabiting men get the advantages of marriage without having to make the commitment." said Whitehead.

Others — like author Danielle Crittenden, whose 1999 book, "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us," puts the onus on women for staying single into their 30s — say it's up to the woman to make sure the knot gets tied early on.

"If there's someone who you are dating at age 23 or 24 — and you're interested in him and he in you — that shouldn't be written off just because you haven't accomplished everything on your 'to-do' list," she says.

As for men, they need "to understand if they meet a good woman, they should marry her and have children with her."