Marriage Report's Predictions Fall Short - 5/06

[Smartmarriages]

What great news. - diane


- MARRIAGE REPORT'S PREDICTIONS FALL SHORT
The Wall Street Journal
By Jeffrey Zazlow
May 28, 2006 
Dire predictions made in a 1986 Newsweek cover story regarding marriage
prospects for unmarried, college-educated, thirtysomething women have been
largely refuted 20 years later.

Twenty years ago, unmarried, college-educated women over age 30 got some bad
news, and America took great pity on them.

The impetus was a Newsweek cover story in June 1986 titled "Too Late for
Prince Charming?" It showcased a study by Yale and Harvard researchers
suggesting that 30-year-old white, college-educated single women had only a
20 percent chance of finding husbands. At age 40, the probability fell to
2.6 percent. Using hyperbole and humor that became infamous then, and sound
far more awful today, Newsweek said those 40-year-olds were "more likely to
be killed by a terrorist" than land a mate.

A lot of us recall the hand wringing over that study, the countless articles
and TV debates, the tearful conversations between single women and their
mothers. The statistics were later challenged by U.S. Census Bureau
demographer Jeanne Moorman, who calculated that those 30-year-olds actually
had a 58 percent to 66 percent likelihood of finding a husband; for
40-year-olds it was 17 percent to 23 percent. But the Harvard-Yale study's
core message ‹ that educated, career-focused women risk spending their lives
alone ‹ still reverberates today.

Well, it turns out that less than 10 percent of college-educated women now
ages 50 to 60 have never been married, census records show. And I did
something far less scientific: I checked in with 10 women who in 1986
appeared in Newsweek and other media reports about the study. Eight of them
had found a husband. Two others were single by choice.

Meanwhile, new research suggests that women today who are highly educated
are actually more likely to find husbands. For a study released last month,
Elaina Rose, a University of Washington economics professor, crunched three
decades of census data. She found that in 1980, women ages 40 to 44 with
professional degrees or doctorates were 25 percent less likely to be married
than women in that age group with just high-school diplomas. By 2000, women
ages 40 to 44 with postcollege education levels were slightly more apt to be
married than women who finished only high school.

Given that 57 percent of today's college students are female, the study is
reassuring. "It shows that getting an education is no longer an impediment
to marriage," says Prof. Rose.

Christine Stroebel-Scimeca is a financial planner in Mequon, Wis. In 1986,
at age 30, she appeared in Newsweek, telling of a date she had with a man
who taunted her about her biological clock.

In the years that followed, she was sometimes panicky about her marital
status. But at 38, tired of dating "superficial professionals," she found
the courage to approach the friendly, handsome man who ran the local butcher
shop. She invited him to a small dinner party at her house. Though he had no
college degree, he arrived with flowers and an open heart. They were married
two years later. Ms. Stroebel-Scimeca never had children of her own but
helped raise two stepsons.

Hazel Weiser, who was 37 and single in 1986, recalls using humor to shake
off the Harvard-Yale study. When it was released, she happened to be
visiting her parents, and both her mother and father, separately, slipped
the news under her bedroom door. She was more amused than distraught, and
found herself advising single friends to see the bright side: "We can forget
about aerobics lessons and start eating as many Dove bars as we want."
Ms. Weiser married in 1987. Now an executive at the Long Island Community
Foundation, she says she is impressed by the self-confidence of many young,
educated women today, including her Wellesley College-bound 17-year-old
daughter. "They were not raised with the same negative voices that women of
my generation had to overcome," she says. Her advice for them: "Don't pay
attention to things in our culture that attempt to make women feel
insecure."

In 1986, insecurity was rampant. In fact, many women found the Harvard-Yale
study "perversely reassuring," because it suggested that societal issues
(rather than their own inadequacies) were behind their struggles to find
men, says Gail Prince, a Chicago dating coach. In the Newsweek piece, Ms.
Prince advised women to "carry conversation openers, like a feather boa or a
copy of Sports Illustrated." Such ploys would feel hokey today, she admits,
but are a reminder of the urgency with which people back then were seeking
direction.

Neil Bennett, co-author of the Harvard-Yale study, now says the media
coverage of it was oversimplified, and didn't take into account that some
women chose not to marry. He says a lot of the study's less-publicized
findings proved prophetic, especially the trend of black women having an
even tougher time finding husbands.

Cheryl Lavin was 40 and single in 1986, writing "Tales from the Front," a
syndicated newspaper column for singles. The Harvard-Yale study was
depressing, she says, "but my thought was, 'I'm not a statistic. I'm one
woman. I need to find one man.' " She met her future husband the very month
she appeared in Newsweek. Now 60, still married and writing the column, Ms.
Lavin says women today have more opportunities to meet men, thanks to the
Internet.

Diane Croce, however, knows firsthand that technology has limitations as a
matchmaker. She was 39 when she appeared in Newsweek. She related how she
was rejected by men at a video dating service. Now 59 and still single, she
recently filled out a compatibility test for an online dating service and
was told there were no matches for her.

"I'm in the same place I was then," she says. But in between, she lived with
a man for nine years, survived breast cancer, and realized she really didn't
want to marry or have kids. She explains that she's happy with her life now,
thank you, but she's open to the idea that the right man still might come
along. "Sweetie," she says, "there's always hope."



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