By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
Recently, Minnesotans opened the Star Tribune to find a startling headline: "51 percent of women living without spouses." This probably marks a first in American history, said the article by New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, who added that in 1950 just 35 percent of women were living without spouses.
William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer quoted in the article, described the shift as "a clear tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-'60s trends associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles for women."
The "51 percent" story sparked a buzz around Twin Cities water coolers. Nationally, bloggers, talk radio hosts and newspaper commentators weighed in.
In the original, extended version that appeared in the Times, every woman quoted spoke glowingly about the joys of singlehood. "I can do what I want, when I want, with whom I want," exulted a divorced 57-year-old mother of two. "I'm just beginning to fly again, I'm just beginning to be me," explained another divorced mother. "Don't take that away."
But the Times story, like single life, isn't quite what it's cracked up to be.
Critics such as Jennifer Roback Morse, an economist at the Acton Institute in Michigan, blew the whistle on the story. The fact is, a clear majority of American women over 20 are married, according to the Census Bureau.
So how did Roberts, the Times reporter, reach the magic 51 percent "tipping point"? In the pool of marriage-age women, he included more than 9 million girls between 15 and 19, many still in high school. Then he added 11 million widows, and -- get this -- more than two million women called "married/spouse absent." These are women whose husbands are temporarily away, on military duty for example, in Iraq or Afghanistan, or even in prison.
There's no doubt that marriage is under pressure. But by treating widows, teenagers and soldiers' wives identically with divorced or never-married women, Roberts exaggerated the percentage of women who choose the single life.
More troubling than this number-fudging, however, was Roberts' attempt to portray the single life, and divorce in particular, as liberating for women. Single female investment bankers in Manhattan may revel in their "independent,"flexible" lifestyles. But for the average woman, divorce or single motherhood brings daily struggles.
The evidence is overwhelming. Married women, on average, are better off financially than their divorced (and single-mother) sisters, who are often plunged into poverty when a marriage ends. After 15 years, married couples, on average, have amassed 93 percent more net wealth than single and divorced individuals, according to one study.
Married women also enjoy happier, healthier and less violent relationships, compared with women in dating or cohabiting relationships, according to research cited in "Why Marriage Matters," a report by family scholars published by the Institute for American Values.
And you don't hear from kids in the Times story. They are the biggest victims of divorce. On average, children who live with their own two married parents have better mental and physical health, higher grades and lower rates of delinquency and substance abuse than other children. They are more likely to graduate from college, have higher earnings and are at lower risk for divorce themselves, according to the Acton Institute report and other sources.
Today, the problem isn't that too many women are stuck in oppressive marriages. It's that well-educated women benefit from marriage more often than poorer, less-educated women do. As of 2000, only about 10 percent of college-educated mothers were living without husbands, while 36 percent of less-educated mothers were, according to "Marriage and Caste in America," a new book by family scholar Kay Hymowitz. This "marriage gap" perpetuates serious class inequities in America, and hits black families especially hard.
Apparently, America's young people understand that marriage is important.
In recent years, overwhelming majorities of high school and college students say they plan to marry, or agree that having a good marriage is important to them. In a 2001 study by the Independent Women's Forum, 83 percent of college women surveyed said that "being married is a very important goal for me."
The Times' "51 percent" story presumably encouraged some women to say, "I give up," and some men to sigh with relief: "I'm off the hook." Marriage has been under assault in the last four decades, but it's still our most important institution.
Katherine Kersten kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain.