AILSA CHANG, HOST:
So do you want to get married? I mean (laughter), I’m not proposing to you, to be clear, because I don’t think I ever want to be married again. And I’m not alone here. Recent reports and surveys are showing that for a growing number of women, women who are not married prefer to stay single over getting married. NPR’s Brittany Luse is the host of the IT’S BEEN A MINUTE podcast and has been digging into some of this. She joins us now. Hey, Brittany.
BRITTANY LUSE, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: Hi. OK, so in a recent episode on your podcast, you noted this one survey from the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative-leaning think tank. And it found that among college-educated women, half of them said that they were not married because they couldn’t find someone to meet their expectations. And then on the flip side, only a quarter of men said the exact same thing. And I have so many theories about why this is, but let me ask you.
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: Why might more women – straight women, I’m assuming – be OK with staying single? And by single, we mean simply not married, right? Like, some of these single women might be dating people or are interested in relationships, yeah?
LUSE: I mean, yeah, I got the understanding that some of these women are interested in having a relationship, but marriage doesn’t seem to be the end-all, be-all at this point in their lives.
CHANG: I get it.
LUSE: I ended up talking to two really smart writers about all of this, and one of them, author Minda Honey, summed it up with this question – am I willing to get married at the expense of my happiness?
CHANG: No.
LUSE: That’s a deep question, OK?
(LAUGHTER)
LUSE: That’s a deep question. Or in other words, maybe I want to get married, but do I need it to be happy?
CHANG: Right.
LUSE: There’s this schism right now happening all across culture but also between men and women. There’s different balances in financial and educational inequality between them. And frankly, a lot of women feel like there’s an emotional inequality there as well. And as a result, the share of single women ages 18 to 40 is up to 51.4%.
CHANG: So fascinating – OK, there is so much to get into here, but I want to start with this idea of a cultural schism that you talk about between men and women. Tell me about what you mean by that, exactly.
LUSE: Yeah, totally. We’re in this interesting moment where women have been thriving economically, and today, there’s almost no difference in average wealth for single men and single women. But at the same time, we’re seeing women more and more likely to politically align with the left, while men are more and more likely to align with the right, which might include the idea that they would embrace more traditional, normative gender roles.
I talked with Rachel Wolfe about this. She’s an economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and she shared this story with me that I think really captures how all of this is playing out in the dating pool.
RACHEL WOLFE: You have people like Alicia (ph), who I spoke to, who was making 50% more than her partner, but he expected that if they got married and have kids, she would be the one to take a step back from her career. And she just wasn’t…
LUSE: Right.
WOLFE: …Willing to abide that.
CHANG: That is crazy to me.
LUSE: It would seem that way to quite a few people.
CHANG: (Laughter).
LUSE: But that embrace of old-school gender roles by men is something that I’ve been hearing anecdotally from friends and loved ones for a while now.
CHANG: OK, just speaking for myself, like, I am still pro-relationship. I just think I don’t need a legal certificate for that relationship, and I don’t want to have my finances entwined with someone else’s. So for me, I’m just wondering, like, are we finding that men are returning to those old-school gender roles more – the ones that you mentioned – or are women just more likely to push back against traditional gender roles? What do you think?
LUSE: That is such a good question, and exactly what the other writer I talked to – Minda Honey – was getting at. Here’s what she had to say.
MINDA HONEY: You know, my mother was 10 years old when the law was passed that women could access credit so that we could get credit cards in our own name, mortgages in our own names. Before that, your father, your brother, your husband had to sign on your behalf. So we’re part of this first generation of women who were born with the right to credit. So you pair that with a college degree, and suddenly we have the financial and social capital to not tolerate things that we don’t want to be a feature in our lives.
LUSE: So basically, the dating pool increasingly ends up becoming this case study really in how power is balancing between the genders, which…
CHANG: Yeah.
LUSE: …Honestly, I have to say, I enjoyed my dating days…
CHANG: (Laughter).
LUSE: …But it makes me glad I am married to someone that I really like now because…
CHANG: (Laughter).
LUSE: …Dating sounds so intense right now.
CHANG: It is. It has been so overwhelming. And Brittany, there’s so much I would love to tell you about on that front…
LUSE: Ooh.
CHANG: …But maybe not on NPR.
LUSE: Fair.
CHANG: So let’s cut the mics and get some wine.
LUSE: I love that (laughter).
CHANG: Always so fun to talk to you – I cannot wait to have you back on the show.
LUSE: Oh, thanks, Ailsa. It’s always a pleasure to be here.
CHANG: That was Brittany Luse. She is the host of NPR’s IT’S BEEN A MINUTE, a show all about exploring what’s going on in our culture. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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