Early Valentines Day Blues
Gail Rosenblum of the McClatchy Newspapers (a Tribune-owned company) has a great article in todays paper called "No ring on her finger, and no end to scrutiny". It's a wonderful article about the ranks of single women reshaping the real estate, healthcare, travel, car buying and financial planning sectors of America. The statistics are controversial but it's been determined that about 48% of all women, 18 and older, live without spouses. Some of this is due to divorce and death of a partner but therapists like Terrence Real write that "Twentieth-century women have radically changed, and men, by and large, have not". That caused a good laugh from a scorned friend of mine going through marriage misery. Myself, I find it bolsters the way I feel about strong women like Maureen Dowd. She said it best in a Washington Post article from a few years back "I'm not one of these people who put my professional life first and suddenly look up and don't have a personal life. I always put my personal life first. I just don't always have a personal life to put first." Today's article cuts to the heart of why that is for Dowd, my many single gal friends as well as myself.
posted by Sonja Stark of PilotGirl™ @ 8:07 PM
3 Comments:
this is really cool! you must have read well to write this blog1 great going! all the best for your next postings!
I feel all men and women should be very happy to be single.They have no one to answer to can live ones life as they see fit.If your career is important to you then that can make one happy.Growing up I watched as my father ran on my mom.I have never forgiven that in him,even when he remarried he did the same thing over again.And not just the dad's do this but the mom's also who are not happy.So why put yourself into something like that,they say do what makes you happy and being single makes me happy.I know that my wife will never run on me.And that I will never make a wife unhappy I'll stick to dating and just that.
Oh, is this a complicated subject!
As much as I would love for everyone in the world to find his or her perfect partner, this is not reality and there are many loveless marriages. Yet it makes no sense for people to be in relationships they're unhappy in just so that someone else (aka 'society') can be happy that 'things are as they should be'.
Marriage is built-up in our society to be the alpha and omega, the answer to all life's problems, the wedding day the focus of every young woman's dreams, yet when reality sets in after the wedding, it can be a real shock. The expectations aroused by romance novels just don't fit day-to-day life.
Men and women give up their dreams in the hope that the new dream will be a worthy substitute, but suddenly there's one income instead of two, suddenly, if you're a woman who's given up her career to become a mother, you're no longer deciding which media will be best for your ad campaign but which coupons to clip for specials at the supermarket.
Yet there are women who are very happy in the role of housewives and mothers and men who truly enjoy being the pater familias, the wage-earner who doles out an allowance. If these two are a match, both sides win.
Yet these are really not roles for everyone - and people who are forced into them by societal/familial pressure resent it and, in many cases, take the resentment out on their children and/or partners.
If you want a career (and what talented, creative person doesn't?) and want a child or children as well, yes, it's possible but the question is how and where you are going to place your emphasis because it comes down to time.
If you're Margaret Bourke-White, are you going to take the assignment photographing gold miners in South Africa or are you going to stay at home to carpool the kids to ballet?
Yet 'house-husbands' are not the answer for career women because they're seldom happy with the solution either - and in most cases what they earn part-time is a fraction of what the career-woman breadwinnner earns, which leads to friction. In addition, there's always dominance in play between partners where one is a major breadwinner and the other is not.
Can there be good marriages? Definitely - but many factors need to be thought through carefully ahead of time and, of course, you have to be with the right partner, not just someone your friends or family feel is right. Way too many people marry 'because it's the thing to do' - and have children for the same reason.
There's nothing wrong with marriage. It just has to be a marriage based on shared values where each partner receives and gives equal value from the exchange and 'happily ever after' can be a reality for both,
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