XIII. Read the text and get ready to answer the questions after it.

“Married vs. Single” Problem

Contemporary men’s movements are taking part in a process of reassessment, reflecting upon what “being a man” means. Unfortunately, many of these “men in crisis” fall into the easy trap of blaming women’s growing advantages as the cause of their malaise. Women too, continue to reassess traditional notions of masculinity and femininity through pop culture.

While men are in crisis, many women continue to flick through the glossies and self-help manuals in an attempt to find their own problems, their own complex identities, reflected there. If some male commentators are suggesting that women, in their will to power, have taken a little bit of men’s essential selves with them, women are recognizing that “having it all” demands some complex navigation between what is seen as masculine and what is seen as feminine.

Women still get married at an average age of 25 in this country; men get married at 27. Now that’s only three years older than they did in 1980. And I think sometimes, there’s a misperception that people are getting married a lot later because among certain demographics, among sort of older, more urban, more educated people, they’re putting marriage off longer.

But the vast majority of people continue to get married at a fairly early age. But still, in certain circles anyway, single has become the new norm. So I think it should be seen as something more than a holding pattern because we do know, for example, that the later you wait to get married, the more likely your marriage is to last. And so if people really regarded that period of dating as a time for self-exploration, I think that they would have a lot better time before they get married. There’s very little attitude of being single for single’s sake. Most people think of singledom as a stage that is a step towards marriage, the same way that people think of cohabitation and living together before marriage, generally as a testing ground and not an end in and of itself.

There’s certainly a stigma to being single. And one of the greatest misperceptions, I think, about our culture is that, you know, a lot of cultural critics will say, “Oh, it’s such an anti-marriage culture, and marriage is so disparaged”. And the opposite is the case, I mean, all of these single TV shows and single books are marriage bibles. I mean, if you look at “Bridget Jones’s Diary” or “Sex in the City”, all of those women really wanted to get married. It’s interesting, though, that this pull to marriage, this ultimate wish not to be single really still exists because so many of the reasons for marriage itself have changed. You don’t have to get married to survive; you don’t have to get married to have a sex life. I mean, there’s much more sexual freedom these days. There are reliable contraceptives so you don’t have to marry to make babies. Roles have changed so that women run corporations, men cook great dinners, and yet here marriage remains the expected state.

Marriage has really gone from being a job for women – and that was really how you got your economic security – to being a choice. And yet, the overwhelming majority of women still say they want to get married. If you look at public opinion polls, 90% of high school seniors say they want to get married; 50% of high school seniors say they want to get married within 5 years which is pretty surprising. And I think what you’re seeing with Generation X is a kind of neo-traditionalism because on the one hand, there is this longing for these traditional institutions. And that, I think, in large part is a reaction against the baby boomers who were the ultimate rebels. They rebelled against every formal institution. Gen Xers, by no means, want to revert back to traditional roles within marriage. I mean, they’re not looking for the homemaker mother and the breadwinner husband. And men, as much as women, don’t want that. In fact, men very much want their wives to work. They want their wives to have independent lives, and they no longer want the responsibility of carrying the economic burden on their own.

I think that if there was more of a realistic discussion about marriage in this country, about what marriage can and cannot offer, then I think that people would really accept the state of singlehood much more for what it is. And what it really is, is a time for yourself. It’s a time to figure out who you are, where you stand in your world and what you want in another person. And to jump into marriage before you’ve established all that is a huge mistake.

XIV. Answer the questions:

1. Do you approve modern women’s will to power?

2. Do you vote for early or late marriages?

3. Has singlehood become the new norm in our country too?

4. Do you belong to Generation X?

5. How do you understand neo-traditionalism of Generation X?

6. Do you agree that traditional roles of men and women have seriously changed?

UNIT 3

CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY

PART 1