I read an article yesterday (forgive me, I can't link to it using the Blogger iPhone app) on Slate that more women in their 20s are having babies out of wedlock. Most of these single moms have lower education levels.
Among those holding college degrees, the story is completely different. These women are getting married later, having babies after marriage, and then staying married.
The article suggests that an explanation for both phenomena is that marriage has become a "capstone event" in people's lives. Rather than being something that happened along the path of one's life, marriage is now the cake-topper. First you go to college, then you explore the world, then you get married.
And this idea that you need to progress up a life achievement ladder to marriage also explains why some people have babies and yet feel unready for marriage. They haven't reached the premarriage rungs yet, so they're not "ready" to slap the capstone of marriage on their lives. The existence of babies apparently doesn't change this.
This is a fundamental shift in the conception of marriage in just a generation.
But it makes sense:
When my parents got married, birth control was in its infancy (pardon the pun), abortion was illegal, and not a lot of women completed college or had demanding careers.
But that wasn't the case for my generation. We had the opportunity to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And we were encouraged by our mothers to get educations and delay marriage until we'd done some stuff.
This shift in the conception of marriage from a place where babies happen to a place where personal fulfillment is realized is a direct result of ladies like me delaying marriage and family in favor of education, personal exploration, and career.
Which brings me to gay marriage....
The argument goes that gay marriage will threaten the fundamental shape of the American Family by decoupling procreation from the marital unit. Leaving aside the obvious arguments that such a position fails to take into account infertile heterosexual couples or those heterosexual couples who choose not to have kids, the argument that gay marriage decouples marriage and children and turns marriage into an emotional and relational achievement is false.
Gay marriage does not and will not do that because it has already happened. And it happened under everybody's noses, and to many a parent's delight, as girls like me went to law school and delayed marriage and childbearing until we were in our 30s and 40s.
So don't blame the gay folks for the reimagining of the marital state. Marriage changed when your daughters went to school and work. Blame feminists for the change in the conception of marriage. Blame me. I reimagined it first. They're just following my lead.
