Twenty Years After 'Marriage Crunch' Cover Predicted Low Odds of Marriage
For Women Over 30, Newsweek Tracks Down 11 of 14 Women in Original Story:
Eight Are Married, None Divorced
Infamous Line-A Single 40-Year-Old Woman is 'More Likely to be Killed by a
Terrorist' Than to Marry-Intended as Hyperbole; Regretful Reporter Now
Calls it 'Irresponsible'
NEW YORK, May 28 /PRNewswire/ -- When Laurie Aronson was 29, she had
little patience for people who inquired why she still wasn't married. As
she passed 35, however, and one relationship after another failed to lead
to the altar, she began to worry. But then a close friend's brother-a man
she'd known for years-divorced. Slowly their friendship blossomed into
romance. At 39, Aronson married him. Then, after five years of infertility
treatment, she became pregnant with a son who'll be 4 in July. As happy
endings go, hers has a particularly delicious irony. Twenty years ago this
week, Aronson was one of more than a dozen single women featured in a
Newsweek cover story, "The Marriage Crunch," which reported on new
demographic research predicting that white, college-educated women who
failed to marry in their 20s faced abysmal odds of ever tying the knot.
Twenty years later, the situation looks far brighter, reports National
Correspondent Daniel McGinn in Newsweek's June 5 cover story "Rethinking
'The Marriage Crunch'" (on newsstands Monday, May 29). To mark the
anniversary of the "Marriage Crunch" cover, Newsweek located 11 of the 14
single women in the story. Among them, eight are married and three remain
single. Several have children or stepchildren. None divorced.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060528/NYSU004 )
Newsweek's story might be little remembered if it weren't for a line
reporting that a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be killed by
a terrorist" than to ever marry, first hastily written as a funny aside in
an internal reporting memo by San Francisco correspondent Pamela Abramson.
"It's true -- I am responsible for the single most irresponsible line in
the history of journalism, all meant in jest," jokes Abramson, now a
freelance writer who, all kidding aside, remains contrite about the furor
it started. In New York, writer Eloise Salholz inserted the line into the
story. Editors thought it was clear the comparison was hyperbole. "It was
never intended to be taken literally," says Salholz. Most readers missed
the joke.
Boston public-relations executive Sally Jackson is one example of a
happily-ever-after that defied that flawed statistic. In the 1986 story,
Jackson was happily single. She could find a man if she wanted, she
figured, but she liked living alone. At 47, she married a man she'd known
for years. Today she revels in having a travel companion, someone to talk
to when they both awaken at 3 a.m., someone to love unconditionally who'll
love her back. "I married a fabulous man and I'm crazy about him, and being
blissfully married is better than being blissfully single, but not by that
much," she said a few a weeks ago. Several days later she called back. That
part about marriage only being a little bit better? She lied. "Being
married is really a lot better," she says.
One striking aspect of this Where Are They Now exercise: none of these
women divorced. Perhaps it's no coincidence. Statistically, people who
marry at much higher-than-average ages don't have lower odds for divorce.
But intuitively, some experts are starting to think that later-in-life
marriages may have better chances of survival. "It makes sense-if you're
getting married at a later age ... you'll have gone through a lot of
relationships, and you'll know what you want [and] what you don't," says
Elizabeth Gregory, director of the women's studies center at the University
of Houston and the author of "The New Later Motherhood," to be published in
2007.
According to the research in the original article, a woman who remained
single at 30 had only a 20 percent chance of ever marrying. By 35, the
probability dropped to 5 percent. But those odds-she'll-marry statistics
turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about 90 percent of
baby-boomer men and women either have or will marry, a ratio that's well in
line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would
marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. Today the
median age for a first marriage-25 for women, 27 for men-is higher than
ever before. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964
married after the age of 30.
(Read entire cover package at http://www.Newsweek.com. Click "Pressroom" for news
releases.)
Cover Story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13007828/site/newsweek/
Guest Essay: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13006808/site/newsweek/
Original "Marriage Crunch" Story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12940202/site/newsweek/
Pop Culture Takes on "The Marriage Crunch":
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12977195/site/newsweek/
Quiz: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12952766/site/newsweek/
SOURCE Newsweek
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