In summing up the essential dilemma for today's woman as she contemplates -- while being handicapped as non-equal partners with males in the workplace (females are paid less than men for the same work) -- either using her reproductive ability or launching a career, McWilliams offers this succinct verity: "They have the worst of both worlds: the burdens of limitations and the hazards of opportunity" (30).
Are Women Eschewing Marriage because of the Impact of Feminism?
or is the lessening of the value of marriage due to other dynamics?
McWilliams, a psychoanalyst / therapist by profession, is not saying that feminism has taken a toll on the institution of marriage. Quite the contrary, McWilliams simply points out the truth as to what choices women are obliged to face. Many bright, forward-thinking women (in particular younger adult women) keep"…all involvements with men" at "arm's length" because they do not wish to be "…dominated, controlled, exploited, patronized, or ultimately rejected" (McWilliams, 31). Is that a description of feminism or simply women's intuition and female pragmatism? On page 32 McWilliams points to a universal truth about American society: while in their 20s and 30s men put "identity issues before concerns with intimacy" but women, on the other hand, put "intimacy before identity." Again, there is nothing in McWilliams' narrative that puts the blame for women's reticence to marry on the shoulders of feminism.
Andrew Cherlin, professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University, presents an objective and enlightening picture of marriage (and divorce) in the 21st century in his book the Marriage-Go-Round. Cherlin picks on Arkansas, a southern state with the third-highest rate of marriage per capita and the second-highest divorce rate in America -- and which also happens to be "…above average in church membership" -- to show that having a "socially conservative electorate does not insulate a state from divorce" (Cherlin, 2009, 14). The author is quick to point out that Arkansas is not unique in America at all; indeed, in the U.S. people marry younger, and after divorce "…find a new partner quicker" than any other Western nation.
Because Americans enter and exit intimate partnerships "faster" than any other nation, there is legitimate concern among scholars that the future of the family is in great doubt (Cherlin, 15). Given that eighty-four percent of U.S. women marry by the time they turn 40 it is telling and appalling to the moral senses to realize that after "…only five years, more than one-fifth of Americans who had married had separated or divorced" (Cherlin, 17). In other Western nations, half or less than half of that number seek divorce after just five years.
Taking the cheerless details further, children born to married or cohabitating American parents are "…more likely to see their parents' partnership break up" than children anywhere else in the world. Indeed, about 40% of American children witness a break-up of their parents by age 15; and about half of those children who experienced the breakup of their parents' union "…saw the entry of another partner into their household within three years," a far higher proportion than in Sweden (where one-third see a new partner in the household in three years), or West Germany (29%), or France (23%) or Italy (8%) (Cherlin, 18)
Additionally, Cherlin notes that women in the U.S. are more likely to become sole parents -- and at an earlier age -- then women in other Western countries; and by age 30, a third of American women have already spent years as "lone mothers" (18). These data are relevant to the society because children whose lives have been marked by "…a series of transitions" in their families appear to experience: a) more difficulties in general than other children; b) sexual intercourse at a younger age; c) the birth of the first child outside the bonds of marriage (Cherlin, 20).
Moreover, in looking at the outcomes for children from broken families, researchers followed more than a thousand American children from nine U.S. states from their births up until first grade; the results of this empirical investigation show that: a) the more family transitions a child goes through the more likely he is...
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