PhDeac
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Very interesting stuff.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...of-the-single-mother-111842.html#.VDyFXmRdVwQ
Collectively, job instability, chronic unemployment, violence, mass incarceration and substance abuse cause women to write off high percentages of men in poorer communities as unattractive long-term partners. An overwhelming share of never-married American women—78 percent—say it is “very important” to them to have a spouse with a steady job; that factor is even more important than shared values about having and raising children. But only 46 percent of men rate a steady job as “very important.” Sociologists Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord observed in a number of cross-cultural studies that when marriageable women outnumber the comparable men in a given marriage market, the acceptable men—the ones who still have jobs—find that they can play the field, and do. But women burned in their initial relationships, whether by the seemingly responsible partner they found cheating on the side or the charming slacker dude busted for meth, become jaded. They invest in themselves, not their relationships.
Both men and women view marriage as a serious undertaking that rests on trust, commitment and mutual exchange. Yet low-income women today are warier of marriage than lower-income men, according to a 2013 study. Among 18-to 29-year-olds without a high-school diploma, 67 percent of men versus 47 percent of women say they expect to marry their current partner; among those with at least some college, 68 percent of women versus 46 percent of men expect to marry their current partner. In their twenties, better-educated men and less-educated woman may have partners whose promise does not match their own; their reluctance to commit increases with the disparities in their circumstances.
Without the ability to choose commitment to a partner who carries his own weight in the relationship, women choose the second-best option: independence, which allows them to control their own finances and their partners’ access to their children. They also recognize that commitment to a partner who cannot be trusted or who is a net drain on the family’s material and emotional resources is a fool’s errand.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...of-the-single-mother-111842.html#.VDyFXmRdVwQ
Collectively, job instability, chronic unemployment, violence, mass incarceration and substance abuse cause women to write off high percentages of men in poorer communities as unattractive long-term partners. An overwhelming share of never-married American women—78 percent—say it is “very important” to them to have a spouse with a steady job; that factor is even more important than shared values about having and raising children. But only 46 percent of men rate a steady job as “very important.” Sociologists Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord observed in a number of cross-cultural studies that when marriageable women outnumber the comparable men in a given marriage market, the acceptable men—the ones who still have jobs—find that they can play the field, and do. But women burned in their initial relationships, whether by the seemingly responsible partner they found cheating on the side or the charming slacker dude busted for meth, become jaded. They invest in themselves, not their relationships.
Both men and women view marriage as a serious undertaking that rests on trust, commitment and mutual exchange. Yet low-income women today are warier of marriage than lower-income men, according to a 2013 study. Among 18-to 29-year-olds without a high-school diploma, 67 percent of men versus 47 percent of women say they expect to marry their current partner; among those with at least some college, 68 percent of women versus 46 percent of men expect to marry their current partner. In their twenties, better-educated men and less-educated woman may have partners whose promise does not match their own; their reluctance to commit increases with the disparities in their circumstances.
Without the ability to choose commitment to a partner who carries his own weight in the relationship, women choose the second-best option: independence, which allows them to control their own finances and their partners’ access to their children. They also recognize that commitment to a partner who cannot be trusted or who is a net drain on the family’s material and emotional resources is a fool’s errand.
